Batum (1919-20) Country Guide
Batum was the end of the line on the Transcaucasian railway so the town had an international flair. The port was always full of ships on their way to other places. Surrounding the town were large and dismal swamps and the town was known for a rich history having been a Greek Colony (Bathus), a fortified Roman fort, part of the Ottoman Empire and the last sea port annexed by Russia in 1878.
It is known as one of the places the young Joseph Stalin cut his teeth inciting protests, strikes and general unrest around 1901. Batum was also providing the world with 50% of its oil via a rickety pipeline over mountainous terrain from the Caspian Sea.
1870’s – The construction of the sea port was finished and the expansion of Batum begins
1901 – Stalin arrives in Batum, setting up base in Ali, the Persian tavern .
1906 – Construction of the Baku-Batum pipeline completed.
1919 – January 12, the British expeditionary forces land at Batum.
1919 – August 15; the withdrawal of British Troops began from the Caucasus.
1920 – July; Britain ceded the entire region to Democratic Republic of Georgia.
In December of 1918 the British, who were desperately looking for oil having switched from coal powered ships took control of the area.
Batum first produced stamps in February 1919: six different denominations of poorly lithographed imperforate issues showing an aloe tree, with an inscription in Cyrillic that transliterates as “Batumskaya pochta” (Batumi mail). From December 1st, 1918 to July 7th, 1920 stamps were printed with “British Occupation” overprints and sometimes with and without surcharges.
There are a great number of Batum forgeries in circulation. A quick glance at Ebay shows that the majority of those being sold there are fakes. Buyer beware.
It is widely posted on various websites that counting the dots above the denomination box will determine if authentic but it only holds true in a few cases. Different denominations have different criteria to check to determine if they are real and there are numerous forgeries broken down into types.
The above stamp is my introduction to the stamps of Batum. When researching it I found some of the many ways to distinguish the real issues from the forgery issues including the “dots”, closeness of the letters, shape of the branches, the shape of the negative shape within the “P”, the shading on the leaves of the tree and others depending on the denomination.
A excellent reference is here at the Big Blue website. There are also more reference sources cited in the article and below for those wishing to investigate deeper.
Additional resources:
http://www.firstissues.org/ficc/details/batum_1.shtml
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=10036
https://www.stampcommunity.org/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26342&whichpage=2
https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00020235/00055/81j
https://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/2011/03/batum.html
Why not visit Ali and Nino, a colossal moving statue of two ill fated lovers located on the seashore.
Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze created the sculpture in 2010 based on the national novel of Azerbaijan of the same title.
Due to the difficulty of identifying the real issues from the forgeries I would, as a beginner, exercise caution especially when relying on small scans on websites such as ebay simply because details can be missed or mistaken. Interesting stamps and I hope to, at some point in the future, be able to write up a comparison of real versus forgeries here on this page.
For the time being, I will not focus on Batum.