Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:00:31.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mail, Rail, and Legwork: State and Nation Building through Postal Service in France and Great Britain, 1830–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2021

Robert M. Schwartz Open the ORCID record for Robert M. Schwartz [Opens in a new window]
Robert M. Schwartz*
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA01075, USA
*
Email rschwart@mtholyoke.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A comparative spatial history using GIS, this article examines the similar and differing effects of railway expansion on the growth of postal communications in Great Britain and France from 1830 to the eve of the Great War. It argues that the modern Postal Age in Great Britain and France began in the 1830s. In Britain in 1839, the Parliament obligated private railway companies to convey the Royal Mail throughout the kingdom at reasonable rates. Thereafter, the expansion of postal services and railway networks went hand in hand. Over the years, thousands of new post offices were established and were closer to rail stations than before. As the years wore on the geography of postal communication expanded greatly and by 1914 the majority of rural districts became part of the system of regular, daily mail. In France, a country four or five times larger than England and Wales with a relatively vast rural population, the task of modernizing postal service was a greater challenge. The inauguration of a “rural service” in 1829 employed some 5,000 men as postal carriers to deliver and collect mail throughout the countryside. Thereafter, their numbers grew as new post offices were established to serve villages and small towns with mail deliveries every other day. In the 1880s, under the Third Republic, the state greatly expanded the postal service, deeming it a national mission. It was then that the growing rail network came to shape the national geography of postal service. Hence, at the turn of the century the patterns British and French postal expansions converged.

Keywords

postal serviceGreat BritainFrancerailwayspostmenletter carriers
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 45 , Special Issue 2: From State-Building to European Integration: The Role of the Railway Network in the Territorial Integration of Europe, 1850–2020 , Summer 2021 , pp. 291 - 316
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary Sources

Britain

British Parliamentary Papers (1841) Letter of Postmaster General, August 1841. The alternative title for BPP is 19th Century House of Commons Sessional Papers.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 53, paper 242 (1843) Treasury Minutes relating to Post Office Distribution in Rural Districts of United Kingdom.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 20, paper 1913 (1855) Postmaster General: First Report on Post Office.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers, Vol 4, paper 2195 (1857) Postmaster General: Third Report.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers, Vol 27, page C.1863 (1877) Postmaster General: Twenty-third Report.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers (1881) “The Frost and the Block.” Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette January 27, p. 3. www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (accessed January, 2019).Google Scholar
Post Office Great Britain (1898) Report of the Postmaster General on the Post Office. Printed for H.M.S.O.Google Scholar
Post Office Great Britain (1914) Report of the Postmaster General on the Post Office. Printed for H.M.S.O.Google Scholar

France

Anonymous (1875) Recueil de lois, décrets ordonnances et arrêtés concernant l’administration de la poste aux lettres de 1790 à 1874. Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar
Direction générale de la poste (1837) Dictionnaire des Postes aux Lettres: Contenant … les Noms des villes, communes et principaux lieux habités de France. Imprimerie royale.Google Scholar
Direction générale de la poste (1869, 1878, 1880) Bulletin mensuel de l’Administration des Postes. Bulletin mensuel de l’Administration des postes.Google Scholar
Ministère des postes (1878) Bulletin mensuel des postes et télégraphes. PTT.Google Scholar
Ministère des postes (1880) Bulletin mensuel des postes et télégraphes. PTT.Google Scholar
Ministère des postes (1900) Rapport Adressé au Président de la République par le Ministère du Commerce, de l’Industrie, des Postes et des Télégraphes, sur les conditions sur le fonctionnement de l’Administration des Postes et des Télégraphes. Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar

References

Bertho-Lavenir, C. (1997) “Le facteur national: la politique des réseaux postaux.” Les cahiers de médiologie 3 (1): 31–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvertt, J. S., and Miller, C. (1983). Rain and ruin: The diary of an Oxfordshire farmer, John Simpson Calvertt, 1875–1900. Allan Sutton.Google Scholar
Campbell-Smith, Duncan (2012) Masters of the Post: The Authorized History of the Royal Mail. Penguin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daunton, M. J. (2015) Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840. Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Dauphin, Cécile, Lebrun-Pezerat, Pierrette, and Poublan, Daniele (1991) “L’enquete postale de 1847” La Correspondance. Les usages de la lettre au XIX3 siècle. e. a. Rogier Chartrier. Paris, Fayard: 21–119.Google Scholar
Gregory, D. (1987) “The friction of distance? Information circulation and the mails in early nineteenth-century England.” Journal of Historical Geography 13 (2): 130–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990) Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Peter (1995) Mail by Rail: The History of the TPO and Post Office Railway. Ian Allan.Google Scholar
Kumar, K. (2000) “Nation and Empire: English and British National Identity in Comparative Perspective.” Theory and Society 29 (5): 575–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langlands, R. (1999) “Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain.” Nations and Nationalism 5 (1): 53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewins, W. (1865) Her Majesty’s mails; a history of the post-office, and an industrial account of its present condition. S. Low, son, and Marston.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCrone, D. (1997) “Unmasking Britannia: The Rise and Fall of British National Identity.” 3 (4): 579–96.Google Scholar
Oger, Benoît (2000) “Les mutations de La Poste de 1792 à 1990, entre ruptures et continuités.” FLUX Cahiers scientifiques internationaux Réseaux et Territoires (42) : 7–21. www.persee.fr/doc/flux_1154-2721_2000_num_16_42_1339 (accessed March 21, 2019).Google Scholar
Pannetier, Gilles (1991) “La Poste rurale: un vecteur de vie dans les campagnes.” Économie rurale (204): 30–4. https://doi.org/10.3406/ecoru.1991.4214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quantin, G. D. (2004) “D’une Révolution à l’autre. Maîtres de Poste réseau postal en Côte d’or 1789–1848.” Les cahiers pour l’histoire de la Poste (2): 1–10.Google Scholar
Rian, Léon (1877) “Rapport au ministre des finances sur l’administration des postes, présenté au Ministre des Finances.” Direction générale de la Poste. Imprimerie National: 1–23.Google Scholar
Richez, Sebastien (2007a) “Postiers et facteurs en France depuis deux siècles.” Flux 70 (4): 88–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richez, Sebastien (2007b) “Le facteur rural des postes en France avant 1914: un médiateur au travail.” Le Mouvement social I: 29–44.Google Scholar
Roux, Muriel (1998) “L’histoire de la poste: bilan et nouvelles approches.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire: 151–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roux, Muriel, Sébatien, Richez, and Eugene, Vaillé(2018) A Concise History of the French Post Office from Its Origins to the Present Time. Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Simmons, Jack (1991) The Victorian Railway. Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Thrift, Nigel (1990) “Transport and Communication, 1730–1914,” in Butlin, R. A. D. and Baker, R. A. (eds.) Historical Geography of England and Wales. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Vandal, Edouard (1865) “Rapport au ministre des finances sur l’administration des postes.” Paris: Direction générale de la Post: 1–23.Google Scholar
Verdier, Nicolas (2007) “Le réseau technique est-il un impensé du XVIIIe siècle: le cas de la poste aux chevaux.” Flux 68 (2): 7–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdier, Nicolas, and Anne, Bretagnolle (2005) “Images d’un réseau en évolution: les routes de poste dans la France préindustrielle (XVIIe siècle–début XIXe siècle).” Revue M@ppemonde (79): 1–8.Google Scholar
Verdier, Nicolas, and Ludovic, Chalonge (2018) “La question des échelles en géohistoire. Les bureaux de la poste aux lettres du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours.” Cybergeo: Revue européenne de la géographie. https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/29116 (accessed June 23, 2019).Google Scholar