Communication has always been critical to international growth, development and understanding, but we take the ability of people to communicate for granted as most everyone has immediate access to phones, email, and text messaging. While instant communication is new, not too long ago, the main source of communication was the written word, transmitted primarily by letters.
As each country developed, the need to communicate increased exponentially. Private couriers worked great for the well-heeled, but as more and more people learned to read and write, the sending and receiving of information became routine. With better roads, quicker methods of travel and the invention of the gasoline engine, sending letters gave way to sending books and small commodities across the country.
In large countries like the United States, the development of a mail service was a challenge, and given the national need for communications, the government undertook to create a nationwide postal system. Some old timers from the original small government caucus, listed only two roles for a federal government — deliver the mail and defend the country. Most people know the story of Benjamin Franklin becoming the first postmaster and creating the foundation for an organized, national postal service.
Like America, other countries also developed a variety of systems, some public and others private, for delivering mail and various items, but in Europe, where sovereign countries abound, sending mail to residents in another country was difficult. Adjacent countries developed bi-lateral protocols with reciprocal agreements for sending and receiving mail.
As countries grew and international communications became important, the only way to send mail between countries was by mutual agreement. Lacking any international clearinghouse required more postal agreements that were as numerous as they were unwieldy. In addition to establishing a bi-lateral treaty to send and receive mail, each treaty contained different provisions about cost sharing, pricing of mail based on weight and any number of permutations that differed from country to country and treaty to treaty.
Into this environment, 150 years ago this month, the first truly international agreement was signed to create uniform protocols for accepting and delivering mail in another country. Called the Treaty of Bern, or “the Treaty concerning the formation of a General Postal Union”, it was signed by 20 European countries along with Egypt and the United States. Within 10 years, another 33 countries would join this organization.
The treaty was not very complicated but established a uniform system to price international mail using weight and distance as a determinative of cost. The accounting was very simple as the originating country was able to keep the entire fee. Previously, bi-lateral protocols required accountings to share fees based on any number of metrics that wasted time and produced little for the effort. The Treaty of Bern also established a permanent commission to issue rules and regulations with binding arbitration to settle any disputes between members. This international framework would set the stage for additional transactions between citizens and commercial interests in various countries.
Once a system was established to deliver letters, it was easily expanded to include printed materials and then small parcels. A financing feature was also added so that money could be sent using a form of money order and to allow goods to be sent “cash on delivery,” which became commonly known as C.O.D. The service of sending and receiving mail expanded to create a simplistic means for regular citizens to communicate, send books and printed matters and to transmit money at favorable rates.
By creating this simple system, the Bern Treaty fostered the exchange of ideas making the world a bit smaller by allowing citizens to freely communicate with others around the globe. The cost to send correspondence internationally became insignificant and was yet another of the expanding freedoms benefiting the developed world at the end of the 19th century.
Mail was not subject to censorship but was to be delivered unopened and as addressed. The busy bodies in countries delivering mail from international sources soon realized some communications could be dangerous, so using threats to internal security as an excuse, some mail was opened to make sure outside agitators weren’t conspiring with internal provocateurs.
Some countries would try to limit international communications to avoid any sign of bad influence, but in retarding the free flow of information, most countries hurt themselves by limiting good ideas that created economic progress. Believing they might be censored, people become more cautious and limited their communications. These forms of self-censorship served only to restrict positive discussions for new and better ways to succeed.
The General Postal Union was a great step toward international cooperation yet a simple step for a very basic service. This simple step would grow, and countries would use this agreement to consider other areas of international cooperation. Sending letters and delivering the mail are benign activities, but because they are practical, these areas were easy to find common ground even among warring countries. As Bern was in neutral Switzerland, keeping people connected could occur regardless of disputes between countries during times of conflict.
While we do take the ease of communication for granted today, simple, practical statesmen realized 150 years ago that developing a workable protocol to deliver mail between countries was needed. What they couldn’t have realized is that fostering communications created stability among nations because citizens could communicate general information that created a dialogue between people when governments were unable to seek stability.
We may communicate differently in the 21st Century but allowing the free flow of information between people continues to prevent governments from shading events and distributing propaganda to create misinformation to confuse citizens into accepting and acting on untruths.
The delivery of the mail seems simple enough for communicating diverse and divergent information. Creating easy communications allowed citizens to be informed to make wise choices, not only as it relates to their government, but for commercial relationships, too.
October of 1874 may seem like a short time ago to some, but simple steps made to reduce the barriers to international communications contributed to the growth of a stable world order.
Will Sellers is a graduate of Hillsdale College and an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of Alabama. He is best reached at [email protected].
