Philippines – Manila, 1908. - Lot 303

Philippines – Manila, 1908. Postal stationery card from the Philippines under American administration, with a 4-centavo printed stamp (featuring McKinley’s likeness), canceled in Manila (Nov. 13, 1908), with an Antwerp arrival postmark dated December 16, 1908, and a handwritten ship endorsement “p. S.S. Zafiro” indicating carriage by a named steamship. Violet commercial handstamp “EL ORIENTE – Fábrica de Tabacos – O. Ingenohl – Manila.” Addressed to Mr. Stanislas Pauwels, 140 Boulevard Léopold, Antwerp (Belgium). On the reverse, a handwritten message in French, dated Manila, November 11, 1908, in which the writer expresses his gratitude for a congratulatory card on his appointment as a Knight of the Order of Leopold, and apologizes for the delay, having just returned from the northern provinces of the Philippines where he endured three typhoons and terrible floods. The message is signed “Ingenohl”—the El Oriente cigar factory belonged to Carl Franz Adolph Otto Ingenohl, a German-born industrialist who became a naturalized Belgian citizen, resided in Antwerp, and traveled regularly to the Far East to oversee his tobacco plantations and cigar factories in the Philippines and Hong Kong; the Belgian decoration mentioned in the message is entirely consistent with his Belgian nationality and ties to Antwerp. Fate would add a curious twist to this story: Ingenohl’s brother, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, commanded the German High Seas Fleet at the outbreak of World War I—and for that reason, the American authorities seized the Manila factory in 1917 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, despite Carl’s Belgian citizenship. He fought for a decade to recover his property, winning a case before the United States Supreme Court in 1927. The Belgian knighthood so proudly announced on this card in 1908 thus takes on, in hindsight, a poignant historical resonance. A fine example combining postal history, the history of Belgian enterprise in the Far East, and a firsthand account by a notable figure in the colonial tobacco trade. Keywords: philately, marcophily, postal stationery, U.S. administration, McKinley, ship endorsement, S.S. Zafiro, maritime mail, cigar industry, tobacco, Order of Leopold, Antwerp, incoming mail from Belgium, Far East. The descriptions are based on our interpretation of the postmarks and handwritten inscriptions, which are sometimes difficult to decipher; they are provided in good faith and without guarantee.