National postal systems

United States

Although the first official reference to overseas mail arrangements (concerning the receipt of overseas mail at Fairbanks’ Tavern in Boston) dates to 1639, little real progress was made in building a postal system in colonial America until the appointment of Benjamin Franklin, formerly postmaster at Philadelphia, as deputy postmaster general for the American Colonies in 1753. Through diligent personal survey and inspection, he provided a more extensive, frequent, and speedier mail service, both within the Colonies and to England. Franklin built a sound foundation for the postal service in the United States, and, fittingly, he became its first postmaster general in 1775.

Postal service expanded rapidly after independence: annual revenue increased from $37,935 in 1790 to $1,707,000 by 1829, when the postmaster general first became a member of the Cabinet. The heavy cost of establishing a postal structure to keep pace with the remarkable economic progress of the country and the accelerating extension of its settled area caused expenditure to rise even faster than revenue. The trend toward annual postal deficits, which began in the 1820s, often exceeded an annual figure of $5,000,000 later in the 19th century.

By 1901, however, this expenditure had produced remarkable results. The accessibility, quality, and range of services provided had improved immeasurably. The number of post offices stood at a peak of 76,945. Postage rates had been considerably reduced with the gradual adoption of the principles of Rowland Hill: a single uniform rate regardless of distance was adopted in 1863 (after an interim period with two rates since 1845), and postage stamps were introduced in 1847. Free collection services came with the provision of street letter boxes in 1858. A free delivery service was established in 1863, covering 49 cities and employing 440 letter carriers. By 1900 the service was provided at 796 offices by 15,322 carriers. The rural free delivery (RFD) service was introduced in 1896 and town delivery in 1912. These delivery services have greatly expanded their scope. The vast majority of mail is delivered by carriers, about one-tenth through post-office boxes, and only a small fraction at windows or counters.

The range of services available to the public has also grown steadily since the first supplementary postal service, registered mail, was introduced in 1855. The major milestones in this progress were postal money order service (1864); international money orders (1867); special delivery (1885); parcel post, with its accessory collect on delivery (COD) and insurances services (1913); and certified mail (1955), which provides proof of posting for items without intrinsic value. In 1911 a postal savings system was inaugurated, reaching a peak of more than 4,000,000 accounts in 1947. A decline to less than 1,000,000 depositors caused the service to be discontinued in 1966. Mail was formally divided into three classes in 1863, and a fourth was added in 1879. First-class, or letter, mail (called letter post in the United Kingdom) is the basis of the postal service monopoly and, as the class of mail most commonly used by the public, has generally had a simplified rate structure. The other classes were established according to mail content: second-class consists of newspapers and magazines, third-class encompasses other printed matter and merchandise weighing less than one pound, and fourth-class mail is either merchandise or printed matter that weighs one pound or more. The addition of these classes allowed the post office to adopt more complicated rate structures that would take into account factors affecting handling costs—such as the weight of the piece and the distance it would be conveyed. Second-class mail receives preferential rates because the dissemination of information through newspapers and other publications is considered to serve the public interest.

The post office has played a vital role as a pioneer and major user of all systems of transport as each was developed: the stagecoach, steamboat, canals, and railroads; the short-lived Pony Express; and airlines and motor vehicles. It also helped subsidize their development. A traveling post-office system, in which mail could be sorted in transit, was introduced experimentally in 1862, and it made railway mail service the dominant form of mail conveyance well into the 20th century. The gradual reduction of passenger train services during the 1930s led to the birth of a highway post-office service in 1941. Both of these services declined rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. Railway post-office mileage was reduced from 96,400,000 in 1965 to 10,100,000 in 1969, and the number of highway post offices in operation during that period fell from 163 to none. Conversely, annual ton-miles of airmail flown grew from 188,103,000 in 1965 to more than 1,000,000,000 by the 1980s, indicating the significant trend toward air transportation of regular mail without surcharge.

The United States maintains the largest postal system in the world, handling almost half the world’s volume of postal traffic. To deal with the problem of increasing deficits and to improve the overall management and efficiency of the post office, the U.S. Congress approved the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, signed into law August 12, 1970. The act transformed the Post Office Department into a government-owned corporation, called the United States Postal Service. Congress no longer retains power to fix postal tariffs (although changes may be vetoed) or to control employees’ salaries, and political patronage has been virtually eliminated. Government subsidies continued on a declining basis until 1982, after which the U.S. Postal Service itself no longer received a direct subsidy from Congress. An indirect subsidy is still paid for certain mailers, however. These mailers, primarily nonprofit organizations or small publishers, pay lower rates than others, with Congress making up the difference in cost. The corporation has authority to raise capital to modernize its equipment and buildings. It is also subject to competition from private companies, a situation that in 1977 led to the introduction of Express Mail, which guaranteed overnight delivery.

The availability of adequate funds for its mechanization and automation program has allowed the post office to benefit considerably from its sustained effort in research and development. More than half of all letter mail is handled by preparation and sorting machines, a trend greatly assisted by the ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan) Code program, which has come to be almost universally used.

Great Britain

The development of the British post office up to the reforms introduced by Rowland Hill has already been described. After 1840 the volume of postal traffic increased enormously and by 1870 had reached 10 times its prereform level. The growth was fostered by the introduction of new facilities, such as registration and postcards, and of preferential rates for books, printed papers, and samples. Financial services were also expanded: a savings bank was established in 1861, and postal orders were introduced in 1881 to supplement the money order service taken over from private interests in 1838. In 1883 a parcel post service was established.

The sweeping social reforms of the 20th century have given the post office an additional role as the chief payment agency for social security benefits, beginning with old-age pensions in 1908. This has been expanded to provide a variety of payments and also to collect large sums for state insurance schemes. The scale and range of financial transactions have been further boosted by the establishment in 1968 of the post office’s banking arm, National Girobank, which provides an improved money transfer arrangement for the settlement of bills, as well as an account banking system and loan facilities.

Another important 20th-century trend has been the gradual recognition of the post office’s role as a commercial enterprise rather than as a government revenue department. The process of achieving full commercial status took an important step forward in October 1969, when the post office became a public corporation. The British Telecommunications Act of 1981 divided the post office into two corporations, one for postal and banking operations and the other for telecommunications. This law also has provisions for the suspension of the post office’s monopoly in certain categories of mail, allowing private companies to compete with it.

To maintain quality of service economically by removing the need to handle nonpriority mail at peak periods, a change to a two-tier system of letter classification was started in September 1968. The system abolished the complex preferential rate structure for printed papers and similar material—based on the contents of correspondence—and substituted the more relevant criterion of priority. The sender indicates the urgency of the item as being high (first-class) or lower (second-class) and pays on this basis, which simplifies the work of accepting the mail.

As in a number of other postal administrations, the sorting of mail has been gradually mechanized since the mid-1960s, with some 80 mechanized offices replacing more than 600 offices. The key to mechanization is an alphanumeric postal code that provides for sorting by machine at every stage of handling, including the carrier’s delivery route. The coding equipment translates the postal code into a pattern of dots by means of which machines can sort mail at eight times the speed of manual sorting.

The post office transports mail by road, rail, and air. In 2003 the Royal Mail announced that it would discontinue distribution by rail, a move that drew protests from transport unions and environmental groups. The post office, however, signed a contract with a private freight hauler the following year to continue the tradition of “mail by rail” in Great Britain. To improve service and to enable next-day delivery for remote areas, letters are flown each night either by scheduled or chartered aircraft. By the beginning of the 21st century, new services based on communications and computer technology had been introduced. The Intelpost facsimile service operates nationally and with many other countries. An electronic mail system enables data for large mailings to be transmitted to local centres for enveloping and delivery.

In 2013 a large portion of the Royal Mail was privatized over the objections of the Communication Workers Union, the members of which nevertheless were collectively awarded about 10 percent ownership. In 2015 the state divested itself of its remaining 14 percent of ownership, and the Royal Mail was fully privatized.

France

The chief stages in the pre-Revolutionary development of postal services in France have already been described. With the Revolution the system of farming, or selling the right to operate a postal service, was abolished. In the years following the 1789 Revolution, the postal and stagecoach services were reorganized into a Directorate of Posts, which became a national monopoly organization on June 16, 1801. After a brief return to the farming system, a general Directorate of Posts attached to the Ministry of Finance was created in 1804. During the 19th century, the service developed to keep pace with the Industrial Revolution, notably through improvements in administration and transportation. The first French postage stamp was issued on January 1, 1849, thereby introducing the principle of prepayment as well as simplifying the rate structure. The scope and range of the postal administration’s activities widened in the 19th century to include postal money orders (1817), registered letters (1829), parcel post (1881), the savings bank (1881), and postal checks (giro; 1918). During these years the post also took advantage of the newly developing methods of transport. Rail transport, for example, introduced in 1841, was so successful that by 1892 it had become an established means of conveyance; postal steamships served more than 100 ports; and bicycles and, later, motor vehicles were provided for postmen’s collection rounds. In the early 1900s a full motor vehicle service was set up for the conveyance of mails in Paris.

The knack of turning technological innovation to good account was repeated with the airplane. The first airmail flights within France began in 1918, and in 1919 an irregular route was established between Avignon and Nice; by 1935 a network of routes linked the main French cities. During that period, the exploits of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Juan Mermoz, and other pilots of the Aéropostale airline, founded by Pierre Latécoère, served to establish an overseas network with French West Africa and Latin America.

World War II severely disrupted the postal service, and the German occupation forces exerted strict control over mail conveyed within a homeland that had been divided into virtually separate zones. The reinstatement of night airmail service in 1945 marked the beginning of a period of rapid reorganization for the postwar French postal service. Eventually the propeller-driven aircraft was replaced by relatively quiet turbojets, carrying 20 times the amount of airmail dispatched in 1948. Additionally, the postal service acquired its own custom-built rolling stock, which is used on the high-speed train run between Paris and Lyon. Daily mail traffic has grown by some two and a half times since the early postwar years, and, to cope with the increased volume, work began in the late 1970s on a network of mechanized sorting centres.

To speed up and reduce the cost of processing this huge quantity of mail traffic, the French postal service introduced a two-tier system in January 1969, thus enabling the customer to choose the priority of service desired by paying an appropriate charge. The postal service also entered the express mail market with the Postadex service, which operates with more than 50 other countries, and a national and international facsimile transmission service (Postéclair) has been established. An electronic mail printing and delivery service is being developed. The banking and savings service has also embarked upon a comprehensive program involving the microcomputerization of virtually every aspect of local office operation, as well as actively exploiting memory-card technology.

Germany

Postal organization in Germany remained on a relatively small scale until the latter half of the 19th century because of the numerous and fragmented sovereign states. The need for a more widely based postal system had been met, to a certain degree, since the 16th century, when the Thurn and Taxis postal service was begun. The fragmented political state of Germany, in fact, allowed the Thurn and Taxis organization to survive until 1867, when its last privileges were acquired by the postal service of the North German Confederation.

The unification of Germany under Prussia during the second half of the 19th century, culminating in the establishment of the German Empire in January 1871, was followed by the creation of a German postal service in the same year, under a law establishing a state monopoly for conveying letters and newspapers. In 1924 the postal administration was accorded a considerable degree of financial autonomy, which allowed it to conduct business in a semicommercial manner, while still taking account of national economic and social factors in determining rate structure and pattern of service. The post office has developed a complete range of normal postal and financial services and an extensive postal passenger transport network and carries out various social security, revenue, and other agency functions.

Mail is transported chiefly by rail, but there is also an extensive complementary postal road network and an important night airmail service. The air service, inaugurated in 1961, carries letters and postcards without surcharge.

The present-day operation of the German post office has been affected by three major factors. First, there has been increased competition, which has brought about the adoption of customer-oriented business policies, along with appropriate reorganization. As a result, the post office entered the express mail market with overseas (Datapost) and inland services and introduced the surface air-lifted (SAL) parcel service to overseas destinations. Second, rapid technological development has taken place. This has been an agent of change in a number of ways: a new general messaging service, incorporating different forms of electronic mail and the traditional letter mail, is under development; entirely new services such as cash dispensing, interactive videotext, and money services based on memory cards have been introduced; and the post office has exploited modern technology to increase its administrative efficiency and ability to compete. The third factor is the extension of the postal system to serve former East Germany.

Italy

A long history of organized postal systems in Italy began with the cursus publicus of the Romans, but a modern national postal system was not established until 1862, when the long process of unifying the former small sovereign states into the new Kingdom of Italy had been completed. The new state postal service was given a monopoly for the collection, conveyance, and delivery of letters, printed papers, and newspapers, and a uniform tariff was established. The monopoly was surrendered for printed papers and newspapers in 1873 but was extended to cover parcels up to 20 kilograms in 1923. A registration service also began in 1862, and postal orders were introduced, extending on a national scale a service that had been made available to the public in the former Kingdom of Sardinia as early as 1845. The Post Office Savings Bank, set up in 1875, and the postal check service, founded in 1917, are other important aspects of the postal service. The post office also acts as an agency for the payment of such social security benefits as state pensions and various other grants.

Railways are the chief means of mail transport, although their use has declined since 1965, while road and particularly air transport have increased significantly, with the need for next-day service between major cities, such as Milan and Palermo. The Italian postal mechanization program moved forward significantly after the late 1970s. In the larger cities mechanized centres have been constructed in which electronic address-reading equipment processes certain mail for delivery.

Former Soviet Union

Following the October Revolution of 1917, postal services in the Soviet Union underwent important development, particularly in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, where the number of post offices eventually increased to 30 to 40 times that of the 1913 figure. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, state enterprises and individual customers alike were served by a network of some 90,000 post offices, about three-fourths of which were located in rural areas that prior to 1917 had little or no service.

Airmail was especially important in the U.S.S.R. because of the vast distances involved. It accounted for about 60 percent of all postal traffic, which totaled some 54,500,000,000 items annually. Airmail continues to be central to the postal systems of such Soviet successor states as the Russian Federation.

Prompt delivery of central press publications had been achieved by facsimile transmission of text, in some cases by satellite, for decentralized printing. These facilities contributed, in the early 1980s, to a significant increase in the volume of periodicals handled.

All types of mail were processed by a national network of large sorting centres. Work in public offices was being mechanized in various ways on a large scale, as exemplified by the national automation of postal order operations. Increasing use was made of computers at all levels of administration, particularly in mail handling and transport. Postal research efforts were centred on improving productivity, staff working conditions, and service to the public.

China

The first use of a postal system in China was under the Chou dynasty (c. 1111–255 bc). A reference by Confucius in the late 6th century demonstrates that it was already renowned for its efficiency: “The influence of the righteous travels faster than a royal edict by post-station service.”

By the late 3rd century bc the postal network consisted of relays of couriers, who changed their mounts at staging posts about nine miles apart. This network was considerably enlarged following the opening of new territories in Central Asia under the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220), during which time contacts were made with the Romans, who, it was observed, maintained a postal system similar to that of the Han. Further improvements were made under the T’ang dynasty (618–907). During this period the number of staging posts increased, and correspondence could be conveyed by road or by river. Administered centrally by the secretary for transport under the Ministry of War, the postal service underwent periodic checks for quality of service. It was possible for urgent documents to be conveyed up to 93 miles in a day. The Sung dynasty (960–1279) instituted a parallel express service for military correspondence, its couriers regularly traveling as far as 124 miles in a day and even more in cases of extreme urgency. The postal network that had evolved under the T’ang and the Sung was to prove a valuable base for organizing the posts under later dynasties. In the late 13th century Marco Polo revealed to Europe the quality of the Chinese postal system under the Yüan, or Mongol, dynasty (1206–1368). Nothing comparable existed in Europe at the time.

Until the end of the 14th century, the post was used purely for the conveyance of official documents. At the beginning of the 15th century, private post offices for the use of traders appeared, conveying private correspondence and arranging payment transfers. During the middle years of the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1911/12), there were several thousand of these private post offices. In 1896 the Imperial Post was created and organized along European lines, and the old staging points that had functioned for more than 3,000 years were phased out. The new state system gradually absorbed the business of the private companies, although the last one did not close its doors until 1935. The last of the foreign post offices (maintained by Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union) was withdrawn by the end of 1922.

When the Republic was proclaimed after the 1911 Revolution had overthrown the Ch’ing dynasty, the service was renamed the Chinese Post. In 1914 China joined the UPU. Development of services was extremely slow, however, because of internal strife and eight years of resistance to the Japanese invasion. Thus, on the eve of the founding of the People’s Republic, there were only 4,868 postal establishments throughout the whole of China, of which 463 alone were in country areas. Postal transport was minimal by present-day standards.

One month after the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications was established. On the mainland this administration reorganized the postal service, known thereafter as the People’s Post of China. Much was accomplished in the years that followed. The mainland postal network grew to more than 3,000,000 miles of roads, railways, and air routes centred upon the capital, Beijing. It reached into every corner of the land to serve remote towns and villages where prior to 1949 the postal service hardly had been known. Letter mail has increased fourfold since the late 1940s.

Postal research centres set up during the 1950s have actively exploited new technology in the design and manufacture of specialized equipment for the postal service. Notable examples include sorting machines using optical character or bar recognition (OCR or OBR) and computer- and microprocessor-controlled sorting machines.

India

The earliest reference to an official postal system in India was made in the 14th century by the Arab traveler and historian Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, remarking upon the organized official service of mounted couriers and runners. The system was brought to its height during the 16th century under the great Mughal emperor Akbar, with a network of 2,000 miles of post roads. Two centuries of political turmoil, without a strong central authority, destroyed this courier system. It was not until 1766 that an official post was reestablished to serve a new ruling power. It was made available for public use in 1774.

In 1837 the Imperial Post was established and granted a monopoly to provide efficient postal communications between the seat of government at Calcutta and the principal provincial towns. Within the provincial districts a complementary local service was maintained. In 1854 the basis of the modern Indian Post Office was established when these parallel systems were merged under a director general. A uniform postage rate was then introduced, a step of particular significance in so vast a country.

International postal relations developed rapidly after the establishment of a weekly steamer service between Bombay and England in 1867, with India becoming a member of the UPU by 1876. At the same time, the post office began to expand the range of services provided to the public: COD in 1877, an insured service in 1878, and money orders in 1880.

Internal communications were improved to keep pace with the progress made in these other fields. The “bullock train”—the Indian equivalent of the mail coach—gave way to the growing network of railways. A regular traveling post-office service was introduced in 1870. Although experiments with airmail conveyance started in 1911, a regular inland service did not begin until 1932. Rapid expansion followed in 1949. A complex night airmail network connects all major cities, carrying a growing percentage of the mail. Railways have retained much of the traffic as a result of speedier train services, although motor vehicles have become the dominant carrier of mail.

More traditional forms of transport—the foot runner, horse, mule, camel, bullock cart, and bicycle—still help distribute mail to many of India’s villages. More than one-half of these now have daily delivery of letters, and almost all have at least weekly delivery.

Pakistan

Although Pakistan did not exist as an independent sovereign state until 1947, its postal history extends to the official postal systems established by Muslim emperors. Particularly noteworthy was the network of post relays at caravansaries (inns) established by the emperor Shēr Shāh of Sūr in the early 16th century. Under British rule in 1852, the province of Sind had the distinction of being the first region in the subcontinent to adopt a uniform letter postage rate.

On becoming independent, Pakistan was faced with a particularly difficult problem of postal communications because its eastern and western regions were separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory. The growth of civil aviation services and maritime links overcame the initial difficulty. In 1952 an airmail service was introduced between East and West Pakistan in which letters and postcards were carried without payment of surcharge. This concessionary airmail system was extended to cover the internal mail service of both regions in 1959. The post office made use of the entire network of the national airline to connect 29 key points throughout the country. The service for printed paper and parcel mail was improved in 1962 by the introduction of direct sea-mail links between Karāchi and Chittagong.

The creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan in 1971 allowed Pakistan to improve its internal mail services, especially in rural areas, where three-fourths of the post offices are located. Postal facilities were greatly expanded throughout the country.

The post office is run on a commercial accounting basis but with strong emphasis on its function as a public utility. Postal traffic has grown rapidly. To improve its capacity to deal efficiently with the continuing growth, the postal administration has pursued a carefully considered and moderate policy of mechanization. At some of the busiest offices, machines designed to facilitate the acceptance of registered mail have been introduced. To speed up the handling of mail in sorting offices, electromechanical sorting machines have been installed at Karāchi and Lahore. All major post offices now use electrically operated stamp-canceling machines, as well as franking machines.

Japan

Although official and private systems of communications had existed in Japan from ancient times, it was not until 1870 that the creation of a comprehensive government-operated postal service was proposed. The idea was put forward by Hisoka Maejima, often called “the Father of the Post” in Japan. It was rapidly accepted by the government, which set up a service between Tokyo and Ōsaka on April 20, 1871, and extended it throughout the country in July 1872. In 1873 the postal service was proclaimed a monopoly and private courier systems were prohibited, a uniform postal tariff scale was adopted, and postage stamps and postcards were introduced. The first official overseas mail service was established in 1875 with the United States. International postal relations expanded rapidly, and in 1877 Japan became a member of the UPU.

Other landmarks include the introduction of a parcel post service in 1892, express delivery in 1911, airmail in 1929, and the achievement of a special accounting status on semicommercial lines in 1934.

A distinctive feature of the postal scene in Japan is the special New Year’s Mail Service, introduced in 1900. Operating partly for the benefit of charities, this provides for the timely delivery of billions of New Year greetings.

The shortage of manual labour and the growth in postal business resulting from the country’s rapid economic development have also led to the adoption of an extensive mechanization policy. To facilitate this process, a postal code address system was introduced in July 1968. Japanese-produced segregating and sorting equipment, including automatic postal code reader-sorters, has been installed at major post offices throughout the country.