Les établissements français de la Côte de l’Or et du Gabon is one of those countries that never produced a stamp, but can be collected via its postmarks. It was a French colony consisting of bits of present-day Ivory Coast and Gabon and existed 1859-1886.
Afterwards, the components in the Ivory Coast were attached to Senegal and eventually formed French West Africa. The area around the ex-slave settlement in Libreville, Gabon were combined with French Congo and became French Equatorial Africa.
Does anyone know anything more about this entity, and maybe other forgotten French colonies?
I'd never heard of Les établissements français de la Côte de l’Or et du Gabon as a separate entity. It's a bit unsettling since one of my areas of collection is France and its colonies. My first move will be to dig out all my French Colonies stamps and look closely at the postmarks. If I bomb out there (and I suspect I will), I'll have to keep a close watch on any French Colonies that show up anywhere.
Another forgotten colony that appears only on postmarks of French general colonies stamps is "Rivieres du Sud", which was a dependency of Senegal that later became French Guinea.
I had never heard of les établissements français de la Côte de l’Or et du Gabon before.
Wikipedia, my usual first source for this kind of info, was disappointing this time with only the bare bones of the story given in the French version.
I've seen references to the Rivières du Sud before but I wasn't clear what this referred to (and having looked it up I'm still not all that clear).
Another forerunner territory name that comes up in the same area is the former colony of Gorée et Dépendances, reflecting the one-time role of the island port of Gorée off Senegal, near (and since overtaken by) Dakar.
The Maury volume of French African colonies mentions several more entities that appear on French General Colonies postmarks.
Etablissements du Golfe de Guinee included the French forts along the Dahomey coast that were fighting the Dahomey kingdom's all-female military force. The Dahomey/Benin colonies were transferred from Gabon to Senegal in 1886. The Golfe du Benin became an autonomous entity in 1889. In 1894 it became a distinct colony, Dahomey and Dependencies.
Cote d'Or (Gold Coast) became the Ivory Coast in 1871 to avoid confusion with the neighboring British colony. Assinie was also used in its postmarks, including the letters ASI in a lozenge on the French imperial eagle stamps.
From 1888-1891, there was a Gabon-Congo formation.
The shifting names, jurisdictions, and formal legal statuses of towns and regions as the French built and consolidated its empire don't resolve into clearcut discrete entities to collect one by one.There are discrepancies between placenames on postmarks and on stamps.
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