IRAQ POSTAL HISTORY 1920s to 1940s
Airlines, Air Routes, Internal and External Postage Rates, Airmail Fees, charges for various other postal services, censorship and postally relevant historical matters
by DOUGLAS ARMITAGE and ROBERT JOHNSON
Full details of this new book, with detailed a Contents list, are in this Pdf file.
An order form and full details of postage & packing charges are included.
The main purpose of this book is to make sense of the airmail fees charged on airmail sent from Iraq to all other countries of the world in the period 1933 to 1946. Extensive tables are set out on 178 pages of this 328 page book. The problem that the authors identified was a total lack of information about many of the air fees and changes to them especially in the period of the Second World War. The availability of original postal information in the English version of the many successive issues of the Iraqi Government Gazette was the clue. Iraq was a country like Italy which continued to charge air fees in addition to surface postage long after countries such as the United Kingdom converted to combined air and surface rates. It became apparent at an early stage of writing the tables that all the other postal rates and fees, internal and external would have to be included in order that calculations of postage rates seen on covers could be accomplished. It was also evident that to put these air fees and postal rates and fees into context a reader would need narratives which described the involvement of various airlines in providing air services to and from Iraq as air routes to the Far East, Africa, the Americas and Australia and New Zealand were developed. Inevitably references to the position in the 1920’s became essential and much detail of the 1920’s is in fact included both in the narrative and in the supporting tables. The best way to indicate the comprehensive coverage of this book is to look through the Contents pages of the book which are reproduced after the pricing information.
