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Updated: May 5, 2025
This was overprinted "20 cash" and the equivalent Chinese characters in a double-lined frame, and again surcharged "100 cash." There is an interesting bit of history connected with these surcharges. The supply of 20 cash stamps was exhausted and the postmaster surcharged that value on eight hundred of the 100 cash stamps.
As in the case of our own troops in South Africa, so the Chilian troops in Bolivia and Peru were allowed to frank their letters home with the stamps of their own country. So also the Chilians further overprinted the stamps of Peru with the Chilian arms during their occupation of the conquered country in the years 1881-2.
Till 1877 they printed their supplies of postage stamps in their own crude way from the same crude plates. Then came the first British Occupation, when the remainders of the stamps of the first South African Republic were overprinted "V.R. TRANSVAAL," to indicate British government. Then, in 1878, the stamps of the Republic were replaced by our Queen's Head.
In 1883 a large quantity of stamps were stolen in Cuba and to prevent their being used the remaining stock were overprinted with the devices shown here. These were the clichés used to print the control numbers on the tickets of the Havana lottery. Sometimes surcharges are the outcome of historic events or are at least suggestive of such.
Lastly we have a stamp of Fiji on which the initials "C.R.", Cakambau Rex, are overprinted with the "V.R." of the Queen of England. During the Carlist insurrection in Spain, the stamps of France, surcharged with a fleur de lys surrounded by a five-rayed star, were used by Don Carlos to frank his correspondence across the frontier into France.
In 1881 the country was given back to the Boers, when they in turn overprinted our Queen's Head series in Boer currency, to indicate the restoration of Boer domination. And now, finally, in 1900 we have the second British Occupation, and a second overprinting of South African Republic stamps "V.R.I.", to signalise once more, and finally, the supremacy of British rule in South Africa.
Indian postage stamps, overprinted with the initials "C.E.F.", for the China Expeditionary Force, i.e. the Indian troops sent to China in 1901 to relieve the besieged Embassies, mark an historical event of no small import.
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