Postal Systems

Sources

Preindustrial Period Postal systems—networks of transportation dedicated to the dissemination of letters and written messages—have a long history. The ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, and Chinese empires each developed complex systems of runners and routes for the conveyance of messages. These complex systems atrophied in Europe and the Mediterranean during the medieval period, where the most important communication networks were run not by the state but rather by universities (such as the University of Paris), monastic orders (such as the Benedictines), and commercial communities (such as the Hanseatic League). In the early modern period, royal courts again assumed responsibility for the key networks of messengers, frequently opening them up to public use while at the same time keeping them under strict surveillance. In the late eighteenth century, postal networks within Europe expanded as increasingly complex road systems reached further into the countryside, and states were increasingly aware of the commercial and revenue benefits that resulted from postal communication. By the mid 1760s most towns in Britain received mail every day, and France had a similarly dense network of postal delivery (although in France every letter had to go through Paris, where it might be vetted). In the final two decades of the eighteenth century these road networks were extended, especially by Napoleon Bonaparte in Europe, and the surfaces of roads were greatly improved. These innovations allowed for the use of horse-drawn mail coaches instead of a solitary postboy, increasing both the volume of mail that was able to be carried and the speed with which it was transported: in 1780 postboys would travel at around three or four miles an hour, but by 1800 mail coaches were traveling at ten miles an hour, cutting long-distance postal times in half.

Railroads and Steamships During the nineteenth century two major transformations further reshaped postal services. The first of these developments was steam power. In the mid 1830s the major cities in both Britain and France were beginning to be connected by fast and reliable rail and postal communications. By the 1850s significant market towns, military garrisons, and regional political centers enjoyed swift and regular rail-based postal service, and as a result horse-drawn mail coaches disappeared. While the steam locomotive greatly reduced the time it took to deliver a letter within any particular European nation, the steamship revolutionized international postal communications. Early transatlantic steamer services were devoted to mail in the 1830s, and by 1870 most major cities, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or the Americas, were connected to international mail networks serviced by steamships. This situation greatly reduced communication times, increasing the speed with which news and information traveled. Where a letter from London to New York would take almost a month to arrive in 1830, it took little more than a week by 1870. A letter from London to Bombay would take

just under a month to arrive in 1870 rather than the six months that was common in 1830.

Reduced Charges The second major transformation that reshaped postal services in the nineteenth century was the simplification and reduction of postal charges. In the eighteenth century, European states prized postal communications because of the large amount of revenue generated by the taxes levied on letters. In the 1830s, however, a new generation of reformers argued that postal communications could be streamlined by introducing a standard basic charge and by reducing the bureaucratic machinery that registered every letter and used complex equations to calculate the charge for each piece of mail. Rowland Hill argued that any letter that was less than half an ounce in weight should cost one penny to send anywhere in the United Kingdom. Hill’s proposal was greeted with skepticism within the government and postal bureaucracy but won tremendous popular support. In 1839 this simplified system became law in Britain, and it soon became the model for the British colonies and other European nations. It made postal communications simple and affordable. The post was increasingly used by a large cross section of society, and the volume of mail rapidly increased. Between 1839 and 1840 the number of letters sent in Britain doubled, by 1850 the volume of post was four times greater than it had been in 1839, and by 1870 it was ten times greater.

Colonies European authorities also attempted to transplant this new standardized postal model to their colonies. In India, for example, the British encountered a society that had an elaborate preexisting messenger system, the dak. Under the emperor Akbar in the early seventeenth century, India had more than two thousand miles of post roads. The political instability that undercut Mughal authority in the eighteenth century weakened this system, and in the 1760s and 1770s the East India Company first infiltrated and then reformed the dak. Still heavily reliant on structures and personnel inherited from the dak, the East India Company opened its new postal service for public use in 1774. By the 1830s there were deep concerns about the efficiency and security of this system, and in response the Imperial Post was established in 1837. The Imperial Post exercised a monopoly over postal communications between Calcutta and principal provincial towns, while a variety of local services connected these provincial centers to their hinterlands. In 1850 these parallel systems were merged under a director general and, following the metropolitan example, a uniform postage rate was also introduced.

International Networks A drive to streamline and regularize postal communications between nations also occurred in the mid nineteenth century. International postage became increasingly efficient and popular in the 1870s as a result of two important changes. First, improvements in transport, especially the establishment of long-distance steamer routes and the construction of the Suez Canal, drastically reduced transportation times. Second, the formation of the Universal Postal Union in 1875 established a standard framework for international postage. Its members, who included almost all nation-states, agreed that the charges for items posted would not be shared, as the country in which the item was posted would collect the revenue while the nation where the mail was delivered received no payment. The foundation of the Universal Postal Union allowed the smooth and equitable administration of international postal communications, a vitally important innovation given the centrality of letter writing and postal communication in nineteenth-century commerce and culture.

Sources

C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870 (Cambridge ’ New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

M. J. Daunton, Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840 (London ’ Dover, N.H.: Athlone, 1985).

Daniel R. Headrick, When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850 (Oxford ’c New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Mohini Lal Majumdar, Early History and Growth of Postal System in India (Calcutta: Rddhi-India, 1995).

Howard Robinson, The British Post Office: A History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970).