postal system summary

Trace the history of postal services from c. 2000 BCE to the 20th century

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see postal system.

postal system, System that allows persons to send letters, parcels, or packages to addressees in the same country or abroad. Postal systems are usually government-run and paid for by a combination of user charges and government subsidies. There are early references to postal services in Egypt c. 2000 bc and in Zhou-dynasty China c. 1000 bc. The Roman Empire developed various centralized methods of relaying messages. In the Middle Ages there were no centralized postal services. Private postal systems developed with the rise of nation-states during the Renaissance; subsequently, postal services became government monopolies. Charges based on weight rather than distance and the use of prepaid stamps were first proposed in 1837. The General Postal Union (1875; later Universal Postal Union) improved international mail delivery by allowing member countries to retain the postage they collected on outgoing international mail and requiring them to treat incoming international mail as they did domestic mail. Airmail and automated mail handling were developed in the 20th century. See also e-mail.

Pony Express Summary

Pony Express, system of U.S. mail delivery by continuous horse-and-rider relays between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, and from Sacramento to San Francisco, California, by steamer (April 1860–October 1861). Although a financially disastrous brief enterprise, the Pony Express and

Dalhousie, detail of an oil painting by Sir John Watson-Gordon, 1847; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

James Andrew Broun Ramsay, marquess and 10th earl of Dalhousie Summary

James Andrew Broun Ramsay, marquess and 10th earl of Dalhousie was a British governor-general of India from 1847 to 1856, who is accounted the creator both of the map of modern India, through his conquests and annexations of independent provinces, and of the centralized Indian state. So radical