Summary of the Corporate Plan of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation
By John Willis1 Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of ... · According to Arlette Farge,...
Transcript of By John Willis1 Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of ... · According to Arlette Farge,...
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XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006, Session 107
(New and Improved: Version en date du 16/08/2006)
The Voice in the Street, the Merchant’s Desk and the Emergence of the Canadian
Postal Network
By John Willis1
Canadian Postal Museum-Canadian Museum of Civilization
(Revised Preliminary Draft of paper for Postal Session no. 107 at the International
Economic History Conference. Handle with circumspection)
Introduction
Every Tuesday or Wednesday a man comes to empty my blue recycling bin at the office.
Polite greetings and formalities are exchanged and we then go about our business. The
amount of paper thus disposed in not overwhelming, but it is a good thing that he never
fails to come as my office is not always in order. I consume a lot of paper, printing out e-
mails, preparing reports and reading or writing letters. In so doing I partake of a habit of
communication that has been 500 years in the making.
The goal of this presentation is to briefly examine postal communication as part of the
overall growth of written communication throughout the western world. The ultimate
purpose is and must be to shed light on the Canadian postal experience, but we may have
to take a long detour, in terms of geography and subject matter in order to arrive at the
beginning of a satisfactory course of exploration. The post, for us, cannot be studied sui
generis, as some sort of self-sustaining variable, moving from one methodological slope
to the next like a self-propelled tumbleweed. It is part of a larger historical context that
saw certain social forces push directly for the establishment of a postal system, and
others, which preceded considerably the post in time, that subsequently become
embodied in these very systems. The latter have since and in turn helped reshape the post.
1 I should like to thank for their comments on a previous version: Laura Branda (CWM), Richard Kielbowicz. D.Gerber, Y. Frenette and M. Martel. Thanks as well to Pierrick Labbé and Jesse Alexander for research assistance.
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Once the modern postal network came into its own, in western society, say in the 19th
century, it constituted a level of communication and cultural infrastructure, a network,
functioning in tandem with other agencies and devices that lay the foundation of our
modern communication society. The internet and the six o’clock news are ubiquitous in
contemporary thinking on communication. How quickly we seem to forget the anteriorité
of the post in establishing our networked communication standards and expectations.
Succinctly stated, my view is that there have been two main locomotives that have
pushed the written form and hence the post, toward the forefront of communication. One
is voice. This might sound paradoxical, stressing the agency of an oral medium for voice
is the instrument of conversation, en tête-à-tête or in a group. However by virtue of its
interpersonal nature it can have written outcomes. Voice, a remarkably fluid form of
communication, eventually became embodied – absorbed but not subsumed - in postal
communication although on its own, it continues to represent a powerful agency of
communication. The other driving engine of communication, is the desk or the table
supporting the paper. The desk signified a process in which a constellation of diverse
interests pushed directly for expanded postal linkage in order to make feasible the
conduct of business.
What kind of business are we talking about? The desk or table top is a writing surface
accommodating a variety of groups, usually the elite, or their literate footservants, who
earn their living by putting pencil to paper. The desk can be in a counting house, the table
in a coffee-house, in both cases serving the needs of a merchant. It might also be issued
to an officer of the crown, member of a royal administration, who is in charge of
organizing logistics, fiscal or military. In modern Europe, you couldn’t wage war let
alone manage the colonies without a bureaucracy in charge of logistics, ever exchanging
information and moving pawns across the geopolitical chess board. Noblesse d’épée and
noblesse de robe had to conjoin their efforts. And the clergy were busy at their desks too,
directing or receiving instructions from the Vatican and the Archbishop, from the old
world to the new.
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The voice in the street and the merchant’s desk eventually become interwoven in a world-
wide communication system or postal village. The resulting marriage de raison coalesces
into a robust communication network which, working along and in tandem with other
agencies lays the basis of our modern communication networks in which the written form
plays such an important role.
For the purposes of this presentation I will focus first on voice, and next on the
mercantile perspective in a global context. Both have bearing on the history of written
communication and therefore the post. I will argue that the post should be viewed as the
dean of communication networks whether on a world or a metropolitan scale. I will
situate the emergence of the Canadian postal network and conclude that there is abundant
evidence of voice and business running throughout and shaping our postal history. For
the most part the argument will wrest on secondary sources, as the task here is to
establish an interpretative framework, yet here and there some primary material will be
incorporated into the exposition.
The Human Voice
The human voice is a message carrier with meaning. However personal, it is invariably of
social significance for ultimately it constitutes an act of communication. There is an
etiquette underlying oral expression; there are always certain rules that must be followed.
Words were freely expressed in the salon of Mme de Rambouillet in the 17th century, but
the hostess, of necessity, used all her tact and vivacity in order to loosen tongues and
keep the conversation going. In Madagascar, Theodore Zeldin tells us, the men are so
afraid of speaking in public that that leave this privilege to the women. The latter, assume
their role, presumably with relish, however when they are upset, or when they articulate a
critical opinion, they verbalize not in their mother tongue but in the French language.
Men, for their part will express anger, also in the French language, solely in the company
of their livestock. 2
2 Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, London, Vintage, 1998: p. 32.
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In other instances, other rules apply. Carlo Levi was a political prisoner banished to the
south of Italy during the 1930s. He describes the scene in his village of Gagliano at the
end of day. On one side of the piazza were the village “gentry” (notables), cigarettes
hanging from their mouths, seated on a retaining wall, taking in the evening breeze. On
the other side, their backs to another wall were the peasants. Their voices did not traverse
the street; they are not heard by the other crowd. In effect two parallel sets of
conversations occur within the village place. Dialogue was kept to a minimum; Socrates
would not have been pleased. 3
Instrument of conversation and communication the human voice is also a medium of
consolation. The mother rocks the cradle and hums a lullaby, which soothes the child’s
nerves. The men sing at their work, especially if they are sailors, for song and labour at
sea are inextricably linked. In Afro-American culture it was almost impossible to work
without singing. 4 Gangs of labourers lay down railway track following the vocal cadence
of their song leader, who imports rhythm, order, to the work. The leader occupies a
position of prestige amongst the group but he can be detested if he dares exaggerate the
cadence of the work and thereby exhaust his fellows. In British North America, the men
with the finest voices became the song masters (maîtres à chanter) aboard the canoes of
the fur trade voyageurs. The crew can reach into a veritable repertoire of songs, some of
which were intended to coordinate the work of paddling (c’est l’aviron qui nous mène);
others serving to generate esprit de corps as crews melodiously teased and chastised one
another. 5
Paris is the city that never sleeps in the 19th century. The calm of night is relative,
punctuated as it is by a population given to nocturnal activities of every sort. Cabarets,
cafés, theatres, modern department stores (les grands magasins), are settings conducive to
conversation. Observers found that the noise-level was noticeable and continuous, the
result of street traffic that would extend into the wee hours of night. Paris c’est Paris.
3 Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli, New York, Farrar Strass and Giroux, 1963: p. 11.4 Lawrence Levine, Black Culture. And Black Consciousness. Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom,New York, Oxford University Press, 1977: p. 208-209.5 Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World. Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade, Universityof Nebraska Press, 2006: Chapter 4 “It is the Paddle that Brings Us Voyageurs Working in Canoes”: especially p. 157-165.
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Certain voices did rise above the din of horses and vehicles. These belonged to the
itinerant workers of the city. The Musée du Carnavalet in Paris has a large mural
consisting of four panels dating from 1633 to 1635 which illustrates the forty different
trademark cries of each of the city’s forty street merchants. The vegetable merchant will
bellow thus: « Chous blang, des Radis Nouvelle, mon bel oignon »; the scrap-iron
seller: « Vieu fer de Roue »; the following cry, « La mort au raz et souris” was a sure
sign that the rat-killing merchant was nearby. No doubt these itinerant merchants were
still shouting their wares and expertise in the 19th century much to the dismay of the
better sort, for whom the clamour, vulgar and popular was akin to the noise of a cat being
skinned. Parisian authorities, Simonne Delattre tells us, were more concerned with the
traffic problem caused by this sort of street commerce; for them noise was less of a
problem. 6 In any event how could anyone successfully extinguish a force as powerful as
the buzz, popular and verbal, of Paris?
The street is a way of living and work, but it is as well a theatrical setting and boulevard
or conduit of communication. During the 18th Century rumours carronade up and down
the pavements and sidewalks, ferried on the person of mobile youths who carry parcels
and messages both within and between the various quarters of Paris. A jabbering and
curious crowd of onlookers stands outside the door of a tobacco shopkeeper, rue Saint
Victor. They are there to take a peak at a nine-year old girl who was, reputedly
impregnated by a young man named Denis an employee of a cabaret, Le Petit Trou. 7 All
manner of impromptu happenings set tongues wagging in Paris whose common people,
gradually elaborated their very own political and cultural vision of things.
According to Arlette Farge, popular opinion was a veritable court in which the events of
the day were re-examined, and imbued with meaning. For example in the controversy of
the late 1720s that saw royal and religious authorities attack the Janséniste faction of the
church, the people of Paris weighed in with an opinion, aided not a little by a subversive
and popular newspaper known as Les Nouvelles. The discrete production of Les
6 Simone Delattre, Les douze heures noires. La nuit à Paris au XIXe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, 2003 : p. 196 ff.7 Arlette Farge, Fragile Lives. Violence, Power and Solidarity in 18th Century Paris, Cambridge, Mass., HarvardUniversity Press, 1993: p. 229-230.
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Nouvelles was a study in successful subversive publishing in circumstances of political
duress. Nevertheless, public opinion was not to be denied. The authorities posted anti-
Janéniste signs about the city that were torn down in a fit of popular wrath. They fixed
placards explaining, in Latin, their position, confident that the language, in which they
were written, would confuse the popular audience. Yet invariably amongst the people
gathered before these placards one could find a few with a smattering of instruction
capable of translating in a voice loud enough for all to hear. 8
Words spoken and retrieved served as lubricants in Paris. They gush like running water in
a spring stream through the city. The research of Robert Darnton demonstrates the ease
with which rumours can travel back and forth between the royal court and the people,
between word of mouth and the written word. Rumours are transformed into popular
ballads, set to a melody, after which they change skin again and enter the columns of
newspapers or popular novels (romans à clefs). The police patrol the city writing down in
a written report what they have overheard. Popular entertainers are also listening and
recording hearsay. Some will pass from café to café and regale the audience with vivid
descriptions the current sexual accomplishments or shortcomings of King Louis (the
15th). They read from various scripts jotted down in bits of paper consigned to the depths
of their pockets. The scraps can be bartered and sold, but woe to the artist caught red
handed by the police with the words of the song written in honour of Mme de
Pompadour, “Qu’une batarde de catin.” 9
Paris was a hothouse of communication written and oral. Rumours extended their routes,
if not their consequences far into the written universe, and vice versa. Communication is
here an interactive process, socially constructed. Café and cabaret emerge as pivotal
points of exchange, inevitable and not unpleasant facilitators of talk, oral and written.
This was as much the case elsewhere as well.
8 Arlette Farge, Subversive Words. Public Opinion in 18th Century France, University Park, Penn., Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1995: p. 46-47.9 Robert Darnton, “The News in Paris: An early Information Society,” in George Washington’s False Teeth, ed. R.Darnton (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003: p. 25-75.
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Throughout the 17th century the English coffee house functioned as an emporium of
communication. This included written communication, as well as messaging of the face-
to-face kind. Pamphlets, broadsides, handwritten newsletters, newspapers (English and
foreign) and business newspapers were all available in these establishments which later
also served as centres for collecting and dispersing mail handled by ship captains.10
Certain coffee houses in London might specialize in American commerce and news;
others would provide corresponding fare and trade for other parts of the world or perhaps
in some other line of business. There were Whig Coffeehouses and Tory ones. All kept a
replenishable stock of newspapers on hand and provided ample wall real estate for the
fixing of notices and advertisements. In London especially, the coffee houses functioned
as a single interactive whole in which were merged news reading, text circulation and
rumour. Some coffeehouses held onto their customers’ mail as a courtesy, others served a
quasi-post offices. The goings-on in one place were rapidly spread from one coffeehouse
to another.
The scale of population and business in London was such that the coffee house met the
need for the development of an elaborate division of labour within the communication
sector of this world city.11 In smaller colonial capitals similar institutions emerged to
serve similar needs. British merchants would rub shoulders during the evening with
professionals and public servants, also of the British stripe in the late 18th Century at the
London Coffeehouse in the Lower Town of Québec City, rue Cul de Sac alongside the
port.12 Perhaps they viewed the London as a haven, surrounded as they were by a
French-speaking majority of Canadiens.
During the 18th century colonial period, the tavern or public house fulfilled a significant
political and social role in Boston and throughout Massachusetts.13 The combination of
10 D.S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press,1997: p. 60. See also J. Somerville, in History Today 47, 6 (June 1997), p. 8.11 Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee. The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse, New Haven andLondon, Yale University Press, 2005: p. 169-177.12 Marc Lafrance et al, Histoire de la ville de Québec 1608-1871, Montréal, Boréal, Musée canadien descivilisations, 1987: p. 132.13 D.W. Conroy, The Public Houses. Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts, (Institute ofEarly American History and Culture) Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1995: Chapter Six “The PublicOrder of the Revolution”.
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men and rum, sprinkled with fiery and seditious rhetoric (again oral and written) helped
mould a public opinion that was dangerous in the eyes of the British and powerfully
patriotic in the view of the revolutionaries. The tavern would play an important role in the
escalation of the fight between the British authority and the Patriots after the passage of
the stamp act in 1764, for it was here that ideas were brewed, plans laid and ultimately
carried out.
In this instance as in so many others, voice, mobile, working above and below board,
pulls at all the strings and attachments it has to the rest of the world whether popular,
immediate or literate. Voice by itself remained a powerful tool of communication. It
enthralled the American evangelical spirit preparing the ground for the Great Awakening
of the 1740s; itself a cultural break with political consequences. 14 But other means and
methods need consideration as well. The New World was in many respects a child of
Europe; a projection as it were of the old continent’s literate imagination and particularly
the appetite and culture of its merchants.
2. The Merchant’s desk: Globalization, business and the post, since the 16th
century.
A desk can be moved, from place to place, or perhaps a little closer to the window. Yet
nothing travels so well and so far as the paper upon that desk. The history of the mails of
merchant capital is one that ultimately embraces the entire face of the earth. The
merchant’s paperwork is necessarily fleet of foot, for otherwise he would have no raison
d’être. The capacity, the appetite for generating, handling and transmitting paperwork,
was developed first with the European horizon in mind and subsequently spread to the
furthest Atlantic and Pacific corners of the globe.
A Bigger Picture
14 H. S. Stout, “Religion, Communications and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, in William andMary Quarterly, 34, 4 (October 1977), p. 519-541.
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Let us begin first with the global reality in which the merchant operates. Globalization is
a theme that of late has firmly entered the public mind and historical consciousness.
Gradual realization of the global breadth of reality is leading historians away from a
parochially-inspired Eurocentric approach. Interdependence between distant units is
gradually being realized. Looking solely at the French Atlantic there is a realization that
national vision has locked respective historiographies firmly upon the eastern and
western shores of the Atlantic. French historians follow the ships down to the sea and
await their return. Colonial (i.e. Canadian) historians pick them up on their
methodological radar upon their arrival.15 What happens in the in-between is sometimes
left by the wayside.
As if the challenge of coming to terms with intersecting Atlantic spaces were not enough,
the Pacific now cries out for attention from scholars. In Let the Sea Make a Noise
McDougall chronicles the history of the North Pacific since the 16th century.16 He sets out
a geo-political dramatis personae of powers, now interacting, now not interacting with
one another. Interdependence, juxtaposition, or mutual indifference are of material
interest to the destiny of this hugely important and vast region. Coclanis argues that the
Manila-Acapulco trade, which began in the late 16th century, was no sideshow in the
world economy for it established a link between Spanish silver in South America and
silks and all manner of goods originating in China, not the Philippines.17 The value of the
trade on this route alone exceeded the total value of Atlantic trade between Spain and her
colonies of the western hemisphere. The implication with Coclanis as with the McNeill’s
is that up until the 18th Century, China, not Europe, was the center or the world
economy.18 History looks different when viewed from the Pacific, from left to right,
instead of from right to left via the Atlantic first.
15 Alexandre Dubé, “S’approprier l’Atlantique : Quelques réflexions autour de Chasing Empire Across the Sea, deKenneth Banks », in French Colonial History Vol. 6, 2005, p. 35.16 Walter McDougall, Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to McCarthur, NewYork, Basic Books, 1993.17 Peter A. Coclanis, "Pacific Overtures. The Spanish Lake and the Global Economy, 1500-1800", Common Place Vol.5, 2 (January 2005).18 J.R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, The Human Web. A Bird’s Eye View of World History, New York,W.W.Norton, 2003: p. 200-202.
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We will return to the subject of the Pacific below, the point made here is that Europe,
beginning in the late 15th and 16th centuries functioned as one segment of a larger world-
wide human web. This web, in its 1450-1800 incarnation, brought together Africa,
Europe, the America’s and the Pacific. Among scholars the Columbian exchange is
become the metaphor with which to describe the flow of pathogens, crops, settlers and
labour throughout the system. From the European point of view, the van of the enterprise
was provided by that floating cannon platform known as the modern naval vessel. These
vessels, aptly nicknamed Mongols of the sea, became the eyes and ears of European
powers as they explored the coastlines of the world. Equipped with cannon, a naval
vessel can send a powerful message to the natives on shore.19 It can also carry back (and
forth) reports, charts, and letters. It is a moving vessel of communication, written
communication. Communication will come to have this global attribute. And the
merchants were in the forefront of this exercise in globalization.
Business and the Information Age
The year 1430 saw the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press. Books could be copied far
more cheaply and in greater abundance, newspapers would eventually follow as early as
1605; the first woman’s magazine dates from 1693.20 Printing presses entered the various
colonies of Europe, Spanish America in 1553, later on in British America, but not New
France. Versailles turned down such requests despite the argument that such a device
would ease the work load of clerks employed in the civil administration.21 The printing
press altered the information landscape of Europe and colonies, significantly lowering
information costs and facilitating the dissemination of ideas. The Protestant Reformation
and the ensuing counter-Reformation kept the pressmen busy. Information on scientific
discoveries, as well as broadsides and pamphlets on religious matters flowed throughout
the European dominated portion of the world economy with relative ease. These treatises
did not have wings of their own; they very likely traveled the mails, whether formally or
on the person of travelers, a fact not often underlined.
19 McNeill and McNeill The Human Web : p. 165.20 Ibid. p. 179 ff.21 P.L. Fleming and Y. Lamonde, The History of the Book in Canada, Volume One. “Beginnings to 1840”, Toronto,University of Toronto Press, 2004: p. 46.
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Although churchmen and scientists had a vested interest in the world-wide system of
reporting and correspondence, the increased exchange of communication on paper
wrested as well upon the developing needs of business. Business needs paper and paper
tools to achieve its purposes. As the ability to communicate in writing increased so did
the volume of information flowing between partners and perfect strangers. The
emergence of newspapers in the 16th and 17th century and the increasingly regular postal
service in Europe both help illustrate the marriage de raison between business and
written communication. The result during these two centuries was a, “gonflement de la
circulation des papiers porteurs d’ordre ou d’informations de toutes sortes.”22
News is something that can be conveniently exchanged face to face when one need only
make the rounds of a single town, village or district. When, however, one much reach for
an understanding of developments further afield, some system of transmission is
necessary, for the answers do not lie close at hand. They must be brought in, by a
messenger, who has memorized the news or more likely by a messenger bearing letters.
The conveying and processing of news took time. The management of time-distance
differential, Braudel explains, was integral to how the merchant operated throughout the
Mediterranean in the 16th century. Merchandise circulated slowly throughout the
economy, as did the corresponding process of payment. Commodities moved slowly,
traveled at different rates, and originated in different places. This created logistical
challenges. The trade in saffron based at Aquilla (Abruzzi region of Italy), required linen
bagging, made in Germany, and leather pouches, in which the bags were packed, brought
in from Hungary. Payment was made in copper bars minted into coins at Aquilla; the
copper plate was imported from Germany. In this instance merchants had to coordinate at
least three different schedules – linen, leather and copper - in order to be able to properly
put the product in circulation.23
The Mediterranean, in this era, embraced a host of localized economic units existing in
some degree of isolation from one another. The cheap resources of “poor regions” were
22 Jacques Bottin, «Négoce et circulation de l’information en début de l’époque moderne », in M. Leroux Histoire de laposte, de l’administration à l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions rue d’Ulm-Presses de l’École normale supérieure, 2002 : p. 54.23 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philipp II , Volume 1, New York, Harper Row, 1972: p. 376.
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essential to the success of merchants. Commodities purchased inexpensively were then
sold or transformed in a market that bought a better return.24 The ability to capitalize
upon a price-distance differential, required knowledge of the possibilities, i.e.
communication. Communication was carried out face-to-face or by post. In both
instances writing became paramount.
Large fairs were the solution to the inherent sloth of trade and communication in the
business world. The more powerful commercial houses, many of them Italian during the
early modern period, gathered at the fairs in order to set the terms or rates of foreign bills
of exchange. The fairs served as financial clearing houses for this most complex credit
instrument. A good deal of negotiation occurred prior to and during the actual
bargaining sessions known as a conto. Once the members of the conto arrived at a
decision, the chancellor of the fair’s task it was to have multiple copies of the price list
prepared by his clerks and distributed. At the Lyon fairs of the mid 16th century the fair
chancellors started a new practice of printing the results of the conto. These became
known as an Exchange Rate Current. They were in fact business newspapers which
could be sold and distributed far and wide. In the long term this form of newspaper would
eventually spread to Northern Europe and England, as documented by John McCusker.25
In the short term this and other forms of business paper would feed into the postal
system.
In the 16th century delays were what the mails were all about. A fast letter is a source of
astonishment, “if it had been a trout, wrote one Spanish correspondent, it would still have
been fresh.”26 Delay in this case was exacerbated by the penchant of the Spanish
sovereign to deliberate long before making a decision. Generally-speaking delay was a
function of the recourse to certain safe, but indirect routes. Phillip the Second would
route his news, orders and bills of exchange to the rest of the empire via the French postal
system. Merchants of the Iberian Peninsula would similarly send or receive
correspondence that traveled via a safe but indirect route: one itinerary went from Spain
24 Ibid. p. 382-386.25 John J. McCusker, “The Italian Business Press in Early Modern Europe”, in J.J. McCusker, Essays in the EconomicHistory of the Atlantic World, London and New York, Rouledge, 1997: p. 130-133.26 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philipp II : p. 358-365.
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to Italy via Bordeaux. Another linked Rome and Portugal via Antwerp. The time it took
for a letter to travel had less to do with the distance than with the frequency and security
of existing mail routes. Braudel found that the indice of variability in terms of time-travel
was greatest over short distances.27 The implication here is that there were many ways for
the correspondent to get his mail to its destination, including the regular posts as well as
other less formal means.
The view dovetails with Bottin’s argument that historians of the modern period should
write a history of the post that encompasses not just the royal posts but as well the
plethora of public-private arrangements that saw to the transport of mail.28 Whatever the
means of conveyance, by the end of the 17th century, in the correspondence Bottin has
consulted, - exchanges between businessmen in Hamburg and Antwerp, or others
operating along the Hamburg-Lubeck-Bordeaux axis – one encounters a diminishing
level of dissatisfaction in the speed and delivery of the mails. There are other signs, some
banal, some more spectacular of postal progress. Accounting textbooks of the early 17th
century include references to the cost of postage as a regular expense. In 1563 was
published in Rome the Itinerario delle poste per diverse parte de mondo. The postal
guide was later reissued in Venice and in Lyon. Another guide was published in Milano
in 1611.29 These were small but revealing indications that postal habits were spreading
still more.
Natives of Bergame and Cornello, Jenaeet and Francesco de Tassis began carrying mail
on behalf of the Hapsburg Emperor circa 1500. The route extended from the North of
Italy to Malines and Brussels (Belgium) via Innsbruck and the Tyrol region of Austria.
Carefully laid out with way stations, the route, covered the total distance of 764
kilometres in 5,5 days (6,5 days in winter) at the exceptionally quick pace of 139 km a
day. The network, which would endure until 1867, expanded elsewhere through Italy,
France and Spain, with links via Calais to England. The Emperor managed to negotiate a
lower postage rate during the 16th century. This, Bottin argues, shows that the Tassis were
27 Ibid. p. 130-133, p. 358.28 Jacques Bottin, « Négoce et circulation », p. 46.29 Ibid. p. 42-43, 50.
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taking in revenues from other sources, in other words they were carrying mail for other
parties, likely merchants, on a private basis. 30 This piece of information Bottin intends as
an illustration of his overarching argument regarding the increased circulation of paper
throughout European business networks. Our inclination would be to fashion a similar
argument, this time on a larger world-scale.
Gathering Information on a World Scale
As discussed above the English coffee house was a great emporium of communication,
written and oral. In the 18th Century one coffee house, Lloyd’s, became a favourite repair
of the marine insurance industry; it was also home to no small amount of gamblers. The
owner of the coffee published a business newspaper, a marine list that on one side
provided information on the arrival and departure of ships at various ports in Britain at
home and abroad. On the flip side was found data on the latest prices on bills of exchange
and stocks. Central to the success of the enterprise was the network of reporting agents
throughout the UK and abroad that reported information back to the headquarters in
London. In 1829 350 agents worked on behalf of the Lloyd’s. Those working overseas –
whether in Newfoundland or in the U.S. - hastened to report back on the safe arrival of
the outward bound ships. 31 Lloyd’s was quartered on Lombard Street, near the General
Post Office. Letters from the agents – they were simply addressed Lloyd’s – traveled free
of charge through the mails. The company paid an annual fee of 200 pounds for the
franking privilege. Upon arriving at the GPO the letters were sorted with dispatch and
held especially for pick up by the Lloyd’s clerk, who then carried off the news for
subsequent processing and publication in the Marine List. 32
30 The practise may have begun as early as 1519. See: Phillip Beale, A History of the Post in England from the Romansto the Stuarts, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1998: p. 160. See also J. Bottin, Négoce et circulation: p. 44-45, F. Braudel TheMediterranean : p. 358 ff.; G. North, « Le facteur aux milles visages », in La poste. Lien universel entre les hommes,Lausanne, Vie-Art-Cité, 1974 : p. 14. Danish Postal historian Christian Pedersen underlines the interest of merchantsfor the royal mails in various European states. Merchants were active as in the administration of the Danish post officeand helped give it a more public function so it could be of service to all merchants. Private communication: June 8,2006.31 According to one study of business mails between Britain and Guiana the primary object was to confirm the safearrival of ships overseas. Transatlantic communication, from Guiana to Britain, in the reverse direction was so slowthat ships might arrive before colonial agents had occasion to convey their report. Seija-Riita Laakso, “Managing theDistance: Business Information Transmission Between Britain and Guiana, 1840”, in International Journal of MaritimeHistory 16, 2 (December 2004), p. 238-239.32 John J. McCusker, “The Business Press in England before 1775”, in J.J. McCusker, Essays in the Economic Historyof the Atlantic World, London and New York, Rouledge, 1997: p. 162-167.
15
The post was of capital importance to the timely transmission of business information
under this system. There was no telegraph in sight and yet here was a coordinated
international system of information-gathering feeding into a business newspaper that
would then broadcast the information to interested parties. The benefactor of a
convenient arrangement with the British postal system, Lloyd’s was in a position to keep
the government apprised of strategic information on world shipping. French royal
officials read Lloyd’s for pretty much the same reason.
In the case of Lloyd’s the appetite for world knowledge was as insatiable as the capacity
to print and convey the information. This business trend was part of a more general
development by which the world was increasingly canvassed for its resources. The late
18th century was known as the age of the Imperial meridian when maritime surveys were
conducted by the major powers on a global scale.33 As well, France and Britain
systematically amassed botanical specimens from the world over with a view to exploring
their economic potential. In 1788 supporters were found to outfit an expedition – among
them the head of the Royal Botanical Gardens, a veteran of expeditions to Newfoundland
and Labrador and president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks – to the South Pacific
under the command of Captain Bligh a navigator who traveled with Cook to the Pacific
aboard the Resolution ten years earlier. Their mission was to travel to Tahiti to fetch a
particular species of plant, Artocarpus incise (bread plant) which was to be transferred to
London and thence dispensed to the West Indies for cultivation on a commercial basis.
The object of the exercise was to bring back as many plants as possible; the comfort of
the crew was not a priority. The voyage of the Bounty was not successful, owing to a
certain mutiny.34
The British taste for specimens was matched by the French who established a botanical
garden in Rochefort, in 1741, that worked in tandem with the Jardins des plantes in
Paris.35 Meanwhile Bougainville’s Pacific expeditions would commence in 1766. At
home as overseas the French, as depicted by Daniel Roche showed themselves to be avid
33 As cited in Michael Bravo, “Geographies of Exploration and Improvement: William Scoresby and Arctic Whaling,1782-1822”, in Journal of Hisotorical Geography 32, 3 (July 2006), p. 519.34 Carol Alexander. The Bounty. The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, London, Penguin Books, 2004.35 Michel Sardet, Le jardin botanique de Rochefort et les grandes expéditions maritimes, Le Croit vif, 2000 : p. 11-20.
16
collectors of knowledge.36 They measured and counted everything, with a view to
tallying up the resources. Roads were built, terrain was mapped. Royal decrees were
passed in 1729 and in 1730. The latter measure was intended to confirm of the fermiers
généraux des postes outlining penalties for those carrying mail in violation of their
monopoly.37 Accordingly a thick instructional textbook was published entitled: Usage
des postes chez les anciens et les modernes. The publication was a compendium of edicts,
rules, letters-patent and ordinances pertaining to the operation of the post: “c’est
pourquoi, wrote the author, l’on ose se flatter que ce receuil sera regardé comme une
espèce de code par ceux qui sont employés dans les Postes…”.38 The post, past and
present, had come under the scrutiny of the siècle des lumières. Royal officials and
philosophes expounded a world view predicated on scientific and economic appetite and
sustained by a world postal communication system.
3. The New Networks: the 19th Century and Beyond.
During the 19th century and up to 1914, the world wide web entered a second phase. The
geography and intensity of inter-relationship was such that no corner of the earth and no
indigenous people was left untouched. The west steamed ahead of the rest of the world,
powered by industrial and military might. British gun ships ripped into China with a force
of 41 war ships and 17,000 men in 1860, plundering the Forbidden City and thus
concluding the Arrow War. Six years earlier Commodore Perry of the U.S. Navy, with
the assistance of 9 warships, established a diplomatic beachhead in Japan that would
mature into a commercial link.39 Migratory currents huge and complex pushed
themselves about the world. Chinese and Asian coolie labour invested the western
hemisphere appearing at railways and other large work sites, responsible, like the Irish
for the dirty work of construction. Between 1840 and 1914, 50-60 million people
migrated from Europe, the trend peaked at fin de siècle, circa 1890-1914. There ensued a
36 Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998 : Part One: “TimesSpaces, Powers”.37 Paul Charbon et al, Le patrimoine de la poste, Paris, Flohic Éditions, 1996 : p. 47.38 Usage des postes chez les anciens et les modernes, contenant tous les édits, déclarations, lettres patentes, arrêts,ordonnances, et règlements que nos rois ont fait jusqu'à ce jour, pour perfectionner la Police des postes, Nouvelleédition, Paris Chez Louis(Sieur?) de l la Tour, 1730. Avec approbation et privilège du roi.39 Walter A. McDougall Let the Sea Make a Noise: p. 282-287, 267-276. See as well: McNeill and McNeill The HumanWeb: Chapter 7 “Breaking Old Chains: Tightening the new web: 1750-1914”.
17
process of métissage, cultural and linguistic, as all sorts of people were transplanted and
mixed together. 40 The Pacific coast of North America, represents one interesting
example of the new world frontier with strong communication ties to the rest of the web.
The View from the Pacific
The California gold rush attracted streams of adventurers in 1849. The suddenness of
events is captured in Marianne Babal’s study of the inauguration of the government
postal service on the west coast. The first Pacific Mail Steamer departed from New York
in October of 1848. There were perhaps a half a dozen passengers on board one of whom
was a special agent appointed by the U.S. Postmaster General. His task was to formally
establish postal service on the west coast, California having just entered the union. By the
time the vessel pulled into Panama City, in January 1849, news of the California gold
strike had flashed around the world. More than 300 passengers boarded the steamer at
Panama City, many of whom were anxious to dig for gold. Upon arriving the entire crew
deserted. Meanwhile the postal agent found that a post office had already been set up on
San Francisco.41 The collective weight of those lining up to dig the gold, not to mention
the others whose business was to service or fleece the gold-diggers, created a demand for
postal communication which was met before the U.S. Post Office showed up.
A history of British Columbia reports that the California and subsequent Pacific Rim gold
rushes, including B.C., were sustained by the appetite for quick wealth and the resources
of mass mobility and mass communication provided by the telegraph, newspapers and
steamers.42 The author could have mentioned that the post was part of this process but did
not.
40 McNeill and McNeill The Human Web: Chapter 7 “Breaking Old Chains: Tightening the new web: 1750-1914”.41 Marianne Babal, “A Distant Shore: Steamer Mail to and from Gold-rush California”, in J. Willis (ed.), More ThanWords: Post Transport and Communication. (CPM Mercury Series), Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization:forthcoming in 2006.42 Sharon Meen, “Colonial Society and Economy”, in H.J.M. Johnston (ed. ) The Pacific Province. A History of BritishColumbia, Vancouver, Douglas and McIntyre, 1996: p. 108.
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In 1858 prospectors began attacking the gold deposits on the mainland portion of what
would become British Columbia.43 The first wave of diggers and adventurers consisted of
20-30,000 people. Eventually British authorities, anxious to take charge of public order,
and demonstrate firmness of resolve on the international scene, especially vis-à-vis the
American neighbours to the south, created a specific colonial jurisdiction with a capital
based in New Westminster. The Royal Engineer’s were brought in to build roads,
infrastructure and, among other things a post office, part of a cluster of government
buildings set back from Columbia Street, one of the main thoroughfares of the town.
Meanwhile the Vancouver Island House of Assembly began discussing the need to
establish a postal system circa 1859-1861, one that would ensure better communication
with the mother country (Britain).44
The more or less regular passage of mails to British Columbia from San Francisco, and
up the Fraser River in the direction of the gold mining areas was regular news in the
Victoria British Colonist.45 The ability or inability to receive mail, was worthy of
reportage in private correspondence as well. A Frenchman from the Béarn residing or
passing through Victoria in the late spring of 1859, complained thus, to his father at home
in France : “…ici la poste est très mal faite ceux qui ont écrit directement pour l’Europe
ne recoivent jamais de réponse ou s’ils reçoivent c’est avec un grand retard…”46 For
Antoine Casamayou, who spent the better part of the late 1840s and 1850s in California
before arriving on Vancouver Island in 1858 in the midst of the mainland mining boom,
San Francisco served a pivotal role in the exchange of mail and money with family in
France. The port anchored by the golden gate was ideally suited to provide access to
Europe, around the Horn or through Latin America, not to mention the huge and only
recently chartered world of the Pacific.
43 Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1991:p. 61 ff.44 See Minutes of the First House of Assembly of Vancouver Island, 17 May 1859: p. 101. Minutes ofhte Second Houseof Assembly of Vancouver Island, Second Session, 26 June 1861: p. 281.45 See for example: May 30, 1859: p. 2; July 25, 1859: p. 2; September 12, 1859: p. 3.46 Association pour la Maison de la Mémoire de l’Émigration, Collection des lettres de la famille Casamayou : AntoineCasamayou, ile Vancouver, à son père, à Ose (France) 26 mai 1859.
19
Among the 12 ships arriving in the harbour of Victoria B.C. in late August of 1859, seven
came from or via a U.S. harbour (mainly San Francisco and Port Townsend) and two
others hailed from Melbourne.47 Casamayou himself would travel back and forth between
Victoria and San Francisco, which suggests that navigation links between the two were
well enough established although in 1860, his nephew Jean-Baptiste did have to wait ten
days for a ship to carry him on the final leg of his journey out from Bordeaux, from San
Francisco to Victoria.48 The link to the U.S. west coast is not surprising; the Australian
connection reminds us of the fluidity of relations throughout the Pacific.
The connection between British America and Australia dated from the 1840s when a
series of settlement booms established the colony of Victoria in Australia. The booms
drew the attention of the Liverpool shippers Green and Company. In the winter of 1841
Green decided to remove their ship from the West Indies run and send it instead to
Montréal and thence to the settlement of Port Philipp (Melbourne). Loaded with salted
meat, fish and alcohol, - with iron from England and French champagne, the William
Salthouse, cleared the port of Québec in July of 1841 arriving in Melbourne in November
of that year where, unfortunately, it sank inside Port Philipp Bay with a cargo worth
12,000 pounds.49 The captain and crew no doubt left some paperwork behind, perhaps
some lists of goods, or even some letters. The first trip of a central Canadian merchant
vessel thus ended in fiasco but it was indicative of the expanding horizons of the day.
Telegraphs and Other Networks, Including the Post
The web was tightened during the 19th century by virtue of the mechanization and speed-
up of transport – railways and steamships- and the introduction of electronic
communication: first the telegraph and later the telephone. Brand new territories were
opened up, for example California and B.C. . The trend, in the literature is to emphasize
the advent of new electronic devices and downplay the role of the post. The approach
47 Victoria British colonist, 24 August 1859: p. 3.48 Association pour la Maison de la Mémoire de l’Émigration, Collection des lettres de la famille Casamayou, Jean-Baptiste Casamayou (Victoria) à son grand père (France), 25 octobre 1860.49 Mark Staniforth, “Early Trade Between Canada and Australia and the Wreck of the William Salthouse (1841):, in C.Roy et al (eds.), Achéologiques. Mer et Monde: Questions d’archéologie maritime, Québec, Association desarchéologues du Québec, 2003 : p. 212-227.
20
underestimates the importance of the post in this process, and it overlooks the multitude
of agencies, devices, networks that together constructed the communication world.
The thrust of argument in The Human Web, is that communication was become
instantaneous. Speed sums it all up. A contemporary poem ran: “For man hath grasped
the thunderbolt, / And made of it a slave/ To do its errands o’er the land / And underneath
the wave”.50 The most distant places were brought in contact with one another over the
wire. Messages could be transmitted to India in five hours, instead of eight months. For
the British investor the New York Stock Exchange was just a few minutes away. During
the late 1860s twenty American banks were linked into common communication system
by The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company.51 The Company was eventually taken over
by Western Union, who made it their business to secure a monopoly of market
information. The telegraph made possible the advent of the private communication
utility, a business in and of itself.
In Canada the infrastructure of the telegraph was established, in the east, during the 1840s
and 1850s. The St. Lawrence Great Lakes lowlands were entirely wired. Links were also
made to the U.S. system in the south, and toward Europe with the laying of the first
successful cable across the Atlantic in 1865. Looking westward, Canadian politicians,
investors and railwaymen based in the country’s governing triangle, Ottawa-Toronto-
Montréal, were kept informed of the latest developments of the Métis rebellion of 1885 in
the Canadian West - by means of the telegraph – which was extended from Winnipeg to
Edmonton in 1879. The telegraph operator at Clarke’s Crossing (near Saskatoon) was
told by the commanding general of the Canadian force sent to quell the North-Western
Rebellion, not to wire news of Riel’s capture in May (1885). Newspaper correspondents,
aware of the capture, swarmed his telegraph office nonetheless. One of them, upon being
50 Quoted in Ibid. p. 217.51 Patrice A. Carré, Le téléphone. Le monde à portée de voix , (Découvertes Gallimard), Paris, Gallimard, 1993 : p. 17.See also W.B. Carlson Review of P. Israel From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and theChanging Context of American Invention, 1830-1920, in Journal of Economic History 54,3 (Sept. 1994), p. 716-18.
21
denied access to the wires, sent a courier to the next telegraph office in Humbolt, whence
the news was eventually sent.52
The telegraph introduced quasi-instantaneous communication capability; no doubt the
willingness to spread news rapidly was there all along. Telegraphy conquered distance
and facilitated in the creation of markets on a continental scale. A recent study of the
Swift Meat Packing company establishes that by virtue of telegraph connections the
company was able to coordinate from its headquarters in Chicago activities that were
dispersed in space from the cattle stockyards and abbatoirs in the west to the branch
distribution houses that supplied retail butchers mainly in the eastern U.S.. 53 Canadian
companies also relied upon the telegraph. Store notes for T. Eaton and Co. in Winnipeg
refer to the heavy business over the wires in October of 1917, especially at the end of the
business day, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the afternoon.54 Rules were implemented to
relieve the problem of telegraph congestion – too many employees were using the wires,
the mail-order department was singled out as one of the main culprits. Perhaps in the
long run, recourse to the telephone to communicate with suppliers or customers would
alleviate the situation. What the data do suggest is that in the huge retailing operation that
the Eaton’s built, no single mode of communication could handle all the necessary
information. Telegraph, telephone and the mail were all brought into play.
In far more primitive settings several forms of communication were used concurrently,
including the post. James McLeod of the North West Mounted, stationed in Southern
Alberta, exchanged letters with his wife, domiciled in Winnipeg, during the 1870s.
Exceptionally, if no mail was forthcoming or if he needed more news, he might telegraph
her. In which case he had to travel down to Helena Montana (U.S.A.) or over to
Battleford, Saskatchewan, the closest telegraph stations. While in Montana he could put a
letter or two into the mail. Not a few pieces of mail from him to her bear a Fort Benton,
52 J.S. MacDonald, “The Dominion Telegraph”, in Canadian North-West Historical Society Publications, 1, 6 (1930),p. 38-39.53 G. Fields, “Communications, innovation and territory: the production network of Swift Meat Packing and theCreation of a national market”, Journal of Historical Geography, 29, 4 (October 2003), p. 599-617.54 Archives of Ontario T. Eaton and Co. Collection, F 229-196 B 273441 Store Notices T. Eaton and Co. Winnipeg,January 1913 to January 1921: Notice no. 353 27 October 1917, no. 354 31 October 1917. On the telephone see no.489: 3 June 1920.
22
Montana postmark, there being no official Canadian postal system in the West at the
time. During this period, one of McLeod’s fellow Mounties (Walsh) sent letters to the
New York Herald about McLeod that were most unflattering.55 Curious indeed that Walsh
should feel driven to tell the Americans about the doings of his colleague, interesting as
well that the news he was doing so could get back to the person he was targeting, by mail.
Mail, telegraph and newspapers could work together, to help disseminate news to people
more than willing to share it. In 1911 a ship sunk off Chegoggin Point, near Yarmouth,
Nova Scotia.56 As rumours of the disaster became known, clusters of people gathered in
town. The crowd questioned two survivors when their carriage stopped in front of the
post office. Thereupon, the Yarmouth Times reported, the telegraph office was alive with
persons anxiously conveying the news. The Times newspaper– which subscribers could
receive through the mail - was able to establish the correct identity of one of the deceased
victims over the telephone. Various media, including the post collaborated to convey the
terrible news.57
The sense of gravity or excitement encouraged the recourse to several media at a time, for
of themselves the newfangled machines did not always capture Man’s attention. One
example: the telephone was first introduced in Chicoutimi, Québec on 13 February 1893.
However Alfred Dubuc, bank clerk and regional notable, preferred to sit at his desk and
write a letter to his fiancée (Anne-Marie). Ten days later he was all excited about this
new invention when a Monsieur Roberge, a tinkerer of sorts, managed to simultaneously
broadcast a musical concert, over the phone line, to a number of households in the
vicinity. Roberge simply hooked up his phonograph to the telephone transmitter. There
were two media at work here, plus an interested audience.58 And of course Dubuc had to
tell his bride to be all about it, in a letter.
55 Glenbow Museum and Archives, (online) Collection of James McLeod: See James McLeod to Mary McLeod:September 28, 1874, April 21, 1875, July 29, 1878.56 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, MG 100, 21-21 d, History of Barrington, Yarmouth Times 12November 1911.57 I Europe post, telegraph and telephone were administered as a common department of government. Convergencebetween the three was thus institutionalized.58 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Fonds Vincent Dubuc (P60), Correspondance J.E.A. Dubuc avecAnne-Marie Palardy, 12 February 1893, 20-23 February, 1893.
23
A proper study of urban communication might turn up a similar pattern of media
complicity as the societies of major metropolitan eras were increasingly networked. In
her study of the advent of the telephone to Montréal during the late 19th early 20th century
period, Claire Poitras emphasizes that the telephone should be viewed as a sine qua non
of urban existence, as influential as street railways, street lighting and water systems. In
her book she documents how telegraph service in the home paved the way for the spread
of the telephone. Subscribers of the Canadian District Telegraphy company, during the
1870s, needed only to press a button in order to call a taxi, arrange for a messenger boy to
come, or signal a fire alarm. The harbinger of networked communication in Montréal was
the fire alarm telegraph, first introduced in 1863. 59 Some of these boxes, rather ornate in
design, could still be found in the streets of Montreal in the 1960s.
The modern industrial city is a collage of communication networks. And the concept of
network was integral to the expansion of postal service in big cities. The handling of mail
in central post offices was complemented by the work of satellite post offices in order to
bring service closer to customers and to remove some of the strain on the main postal
establishment. By 1891 the city of Montréal counted two branch offices in addition to the
central one at Place D’Armes and postal authorities were considering opening a third.
Since 1874 three wagons collected mail from the city’s letter boxes and receiving
stations. This was all straightforward and simple. By the year 1916, Montréal and
suburbs were served by 1 central post office, 11 postal stations, 55 sub-post offices and
35 accounting post offices, a total of 102 establishments all functioning in coordinated
fashion.60 The postal network was as much a part of daily life in the métropole, as the
trams that carried passengers, and letter carriers, about the city.
By the turn of the 20th century, there emerged a constellation of networks, including the
postal service, moving, commanding, instructing, coordinating, carrying, and sometimes
just breathing life into words, spoken and written. The words are written on the back of a
59 Claire Poitras, La cité au bout du fil. Le téléphone à Montréal de 1879 à 1930, Montréal, Presses de l’Université deMontréal, 2000 : p. 65-67. Specimens of these boxes could still be found on the streets of Westmount in the 1960s.60 Data for 1916 from the Annual Report of the Postmaster Genera for that year. The 1891 information can be found inLibrary and Archives Canada (LAC) Records of the Post Office (RG-3), D-3 Post Office Inspector’s Reports: MontréalPost Office Inspector (Microfilm Reel T-2398) file 127-830. Montréal Inspector to Postmaster General, 5 June 1891.
24
park bench, on a theatre marquee, on the front page of the daily newspaper, on the
staircase leading up or down from the métro. In Alberta, the front page (or big news
items) of the Edmonton Journal, were transcribed onto a giant outdoor sign giving onto a
busy city street corner.61 The words tell you where and when to go, what to see or buy
and ultimately, what to think. But they also left room for considerable creativity.
Impromptu speaker’s corners and conversation pieces adorn the street corners, taverns,
and union halls of the city. Bible thumpers, strive to catch the attention of passers-by.
The result, to borrow an expression from Peter Fritzsche is the word city.62
Communication becomes a cluster of concurrent networks of news, sales pitches and
dissent and art. The post is part of this. It is or was, along with the press, perhaps the dean
of urban networks. A lot of postal history transpired prior to the advent of electronic
media and would continue to do so after their advent.
Building the Postal Network in the Early 19th Century
Richard Kielbowicz lays out a provocative agenda in his study of the press, the post
office and public information from the 18th century to the 1860s.63 The exchange of
printed information via the post constituted the foundation of public information in the
late colonial and ante-bellum U.S.A. Newspapers benefited from postal service by virtue
of the free exchanges of copy between publishers, express delivery services for big news,
and access to the readership, through the mails. Peter Goheen has similarly documented
the complicity between press and post in mid 19th century Canada.64
A cursory look at John and Samuel Neilson’s Québec Gazette offers a ground-level
portrait of the marriage between press and post. The paper was printed on Côte de la
Montagne, just down the street from the city post office. Two hundred of the 210 thrice-
weekly editions of the Gazette were distributed to subscribers throughout the province,
61 D.G. Wetherell, C. Cavanaugh, M. Payne (eds.), Alberta Formed, Alberta Transformed, Calgary, Uiversity ofCalgary Press, 2005 (Volume 2): p. 407. The sign of the Edmonton Journal was fixed on the outside wall of theDominion Cigar Store shop on Jasper Street.62 Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin: 1900 Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1996.63 Richard B. Kielbowicz, News in the Mail. The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700-1860s, New York,Greenwood Press, 1989. See for example p. 1-3.64 Peter Goheen, “Communications and Newsmaking Before the Telegraph: The Story of the 1845 Québec City Fires”,in The Canadian Geographer 37,3 (Fall 1993), p. 230-242.
25
most by mail I expect. In or around 1833 40 copies were distributed to postmasters in
Lower Canada. The idea was to turn these postmasters into de facto agents for the
newspaper. How many thus became agents is a not yet known but some did become
willing servants of the Gazette. The Neilson papers contain ongoing correspondence
between the postmaster of Trois-Rivières and the owners of the Gazette. The postmaster
passed along requests from newspaper customers. A gentleman from the nearby village
of Bécancour asked for a copy of the newspaper; two others did not receive their copy;
another would like to cancel his subscription… The postmaster concluded in his of May
24th, 1826, “I will thank you to publish in your Gazette the enclosed list of letters
remaining in this office.”65 The postmaster did favours for the newspaper and the Gazette
returned the politesse. They were birds of a feather.
Newspapers circulate and a public information highway is carved out upon the landscape.
Yet all is not calm and bright, for once put in circulation different ideas rub up against
one another, they collide. Kielbowicz stresses that the public information exchange can
have both a binding and a divisive effect. The ambient circulation of posted newspapers
and ideas could create a national constituency of like-minded followers of a particular
political or religious belief.66 Concurrent if not hostile constituencies could and did
emerge. Richard John makes this precise point in his study of the U.S. Post office from
1775 to 1844. Especially poignant is the discussion of the controversy over the
distribution of abolitionist newspapers via the mail throughout the Southern States. The
debate erupted in 1835 and made manifest the sectional divisions within the U.S.
republic. Southern state governments, notables and officials were dead against the idea of
allowing the abolitionists to distribute their literature through the mail system. The
members of the Jackson administration agreed and prevailed.67
The underlying point, made by John throughout is book is that the post is not immune to
pressure economic, social and political originating in the rest of society. It can serve as
65 Library and Archives Canada, John Neilson Collection, MG 24 B 1, Microfilm Reel C-15613, Volume 174: QuebecGazette Correspondence 1796-1835: Thomas Bignell to publishers of Quebec Gazette, 24 May 1826. See also Neilsonto Cowan February 7 1833.66 R.B. Kielbowics News in the Mail: p. 5-6.67 Richard R. John, Spreading the News. The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse, Cambridge, Mass.,Harvard University Press, 1995: p. 257 ff.
26
communication catalyst, but as well it can be bent or warped to assume a particular
shape: The Jacksonian post office was as much a creature of politics as communication. It
could become a battleground for conflicting voices, or for competing business strategies.
The lobbying of stagecoach companies, for example, had a lot to do with the geography
of mail conveyance.68
What of the Canadian postal network? Clearly its formal roots lie in the late 18th and
early 19th century period for there was no formal postal system during the French regime
a situation most unlike the one prevailing in the 13 colonies where the genesis of a postal
system was gradually if sometimes tentatively set in place. Throughout the colonies of
British North America, beginning in 1763 a postal administration was set in place, postal
roads laid out and post offices opened.
The story was not all one of unbounded progress and ever-increasing postal mileage. As
indicated above, newspapers emerged as avid users of the mail, but they did not all
broadcast the same message. Dissenting or dissimilar visions were published and
circulated. La Minerve and the Vindicator (in Lower Canada), the Colonial Advocate and
the Canadian Freeman in Upper Canada espoused views that were quite hostile to the
crown, if not frankly supportive of the movement that would eventually foment rebellion
in 1837 and 1838. Staunch supporters of the British establishment might read such
newspapers as the Montreal Gazette, the Courier of Upper Canada and the Quebec
Mercury. The Roman-Catholic bishop of Montréal, a fierce opponent of Rebellion
seriously considered purchasing the entire presses of a Québec City newspaper and
moving them to Montréal under clerical direction and control. Newspapers were, he
expressed on another occasion “un puissant moyen pour former et maîtriser l’opinion
publique.”69 In effect the bishop and the rebels were reading from the same script. Their
68 Ibid. p. 92 ff.69 J.-J. Lartigue, Bishop to Montréal to Msgr Panet, 20 February 1832, as cited in J. Willis, Selling God by Post inFrench Canada”, R.B. Klymasz and J. Willis (eds.), Revelations. Bi-Millenial Papers from the Canadian Museum ofCivilization (CCFCS Mercury no. 75), Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2001: p. 266. Reverend Strachan,Anglican priest and eventually bishop of Upper Canada, helped finance the Montreal Herald during the early going,shortly after it was founded in 1811. Church and press were not separate things. See Jean Hamelin et André Beaulieu,Les journaux du Québec de 1764 à 1964, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 1965.
27
political premises were at odds, but their assumptions vis-à-vis public information were
similar.
Caught up in the ongoing dispute between colonial and metropolitan interests the post
was also affected by the growing scale of colonial society – oweing to demographic
growth and the integrative forces which resulted from or capitalized upon this process.
From 1800 to 1850 the population the three Maritime colonies (Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, Prince Edward Island), rose from 80,000 to 500,000. Meanwhile in the two
Canadian provinces the combined population rose from 638,000 in 1825 to 1,8 million,
25 years later. Throughout the early 19th century a web of trade, transport and
communication was gradually spun around the principal towns of British North America.
Goods, services, labour and mail, not to mention disease, were shunted about on
steamboats, sailing vessels, railway lines, coaches, carriages and sleds of every
description. The mails were carried under contract to the post office. They were quite
often also carried informally on the person of willing travelers, prepared to convey mail
by favour. Whether formal or informal, the conveyance of mail, newspapers, business
mail, personal letters, created an integrative dynamic that was of no small consequence
for in the manner of the blind leading the blind, it lead British North Americans to
articulate a more self-conscious vision of themselves if not as independent then at least as
an existing entity alongside the imperial link. Confederation was not necessarily the
inevitable result, but as it turns out, momentum in that direction was, slowly, starting to
gather70
From an indigenous political perspective the growth of a public information sector,
wresting upon press and post, in the early 19th Century, created a domestic postal
constituency, that would help push for the takeover of the colonial mails in 1849, an
ancillary but tangible benefit of the achievement of Responsible Government. The fact
that postage collected on newspaper circulation to subscribers, was treated as a personal
70 John Willis, “The Canadian Colonial Posts: Epistolary Continuity, Postal Transformation”, in D. Pollard and G.Martin, Canada 1849. A selection of papers give at the University of Edinburgh Center for Canadian Studies AnnualConference May 1999, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Center of Canadian Studies, 2001: p. 224-254.
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emolument of the Deputy Postmaster General of Canada an imperially-appointed official
up to 1851 – and was not ploughed back into the administration of the system - certainly
added some newspaper-publishing momentum to the exercise in the repatriation of postal
responsibility. Once the British American colonies took over their postal affairs, new
possibilities, new opportunities are seized upon.
According to Osborne and Pyke, the takeover of the domestic posts laid the foundation
for an ensuing communication revolution which began during the 1850s and persisted
after the turn of the century.71 Private interpersonal communication (letter mail) was
considerably facilitated, following the introduction of the standard three-penny postage
rate, in 1851, which represented a substantial saving in the average cost of posting a
letter.72 It was now possible, as well, for a greater variety of organizations (including
businesses) to access the public via the government-owned postal service. Commodities
both commercial and cultural could flow with greater ease from sender to receiver and
back again. The postally-derived communication revolution created expectations that
were catered to by the post office in the short term. It also assisted in the advent of other
communication systems directly and indirectly. The emerging urban civilization was a
highly networked one, the post office furnishing one substantial cog in the networking
wheel which was ultimately global in scope.
The modern post office thus construed is an achievement, a force for change. Yet it
cannot be studied as an institution aloof from society. It is anything but indifferent to
certain fundamental social and human needs of communication. The merchants,
newspapermen and politicians that formed the backbone of the colonial elite played a
prominent role in the making of the Canadian post office. But somewhere in the
background, one can hear the echoes of not a few voices in the street gathered in the
makeshift vestibule of a post office waiting to receive or send their mail. It is as if, once it
71 B. S. Osborne and R. Pike, “Lowering the Walls of Oblivion: The Revolution in Postal Communications in CentralCanada, 1851–1911, Canadian Papers in Rural History, vol. 4 (Gananoque: Langdale Press, 1984), p. 201, 220-221.72 Prior to 1851 postage rates varied according to the distance the mail had to travel. Average postage on a letter wasworth nine pence. See: William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639-1870, Cambridge,At the University Press, 1920: p. 275. Richard John similarly stresses that rate reductions in the U.S. contributed to theexplosion of letter-writing in the U.S.: See R. John Spreading the News: p. 161.
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reached a certain generalized plateau, the post could not ignore the plurality of
constituencies, of voices, calling out for service.
Perspective
The Dominion Post Office Act was passed in 1868. It established a Post Office
Department headquartered in Ottawa. The legislation laid down the rules and regulations
for sending mail and codified certain established postal practices; this included the
institution of the railway mail service, which dates from 1854, and the concept of postage
based on the weight of mail and not the number of sheets (1844). The postal network
would be expanded by virtue of the growth in the number of post offices across the land,
the introduction of letter carrier service and eventually the introduction of rural mail
delivery. The post office was an institutional complex that was integral to the Canadian
communication infrastructure throughout the late 19th and 20th century period. Yet while
possessed of considerable institutional élan, the post office ultimately cannot be
considered to be the sole arbiter of its destiny. Ultimately the post owes its existence to
two underlying agencies: the voice in the street and the merchant’s desk. There is ample
evidence of each throughout Canadian history.
Business has had a long association with the mails. In fact the mercantile imperative
predates the formal establishment of postal service in Canada. There was no formal postal
system moving mail across the Atlantic between France and New France, Jane Harrison
shows, and yet the letters flowed due to the initiative and diligence of merchants, captains
and correspondents. 73 The business elite of British North America sent letters through the
mails or via their own messengers to correspondents overseas and elsewhere in North
America. New York represented a new and significant window upon the world economy
for colonial businessmen beginning in the late 18th century. Newspapers in both of the
Canada’s and throughout the Maritimes did business through the mails. The Howe
family, which published inter alia the Nova Scotian, and held office in the colonial postal
service of Nova Scotia, had a foot firmly planted in both camps.
73 Jane Harrison, Until Next Year. Letter Writing and the Mails in the Canada’s, 1640-1830, Hull, Canadian Museumof Civilization-Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997.
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The association between press and post carried well into the late 19th and 20th century
period for how else could publishers arrange to ship the newspapers to their subscribers.74
Meanwhile the postal thrust of business extended into mail-order retailing, a form of
enterprise that employed thousands in many of the major urban centers of the country.
Mail orders to and from Eaton’s, Simpson’s Woodward’s, Army and Navy and Dupuis
Frères, generated and consumed huge amounts of mail. They represent one recurrent item
in the sea of business correspondence enveloping Canadians as the 20th century unfolded.
Canadian households were thus awash in mail, but their members are not drowning, for
they too were acting in the postal manner.
Voice has never been far from postal communication. It is present, as an accessory, in
thousands of country post offices, where face-to-face interaction between postmaster and
public obtains on a daily basis; and where patrons share the latest news while waiting in
line for the mail. Voice is on the paper and between the lines of innumerable letters
received and sent by immigrants come to settle in Canada during for example the late 19th
and early 20th century period. Relations with kin, back in the old-country may have been
a face-to-face affair. Now it was necessary to talk, but in writing, on paper. Words may or
may not have come easily. They were supplemented with snapshots and picture
postcards.
The geographic range of the personal postal economy is considerable. Greetings are
exchanged here and there across the world, with the entourage back home in Japan, or
the inhabitants of the Molise in Italy, who are sent money, or requests to come out and
join the family; to father and mother in England: could they, the Canadian correspondent
asks, send some copies of the parish weekly newspaper? Conversations are directed back
and forth across the Canadian-American border by Canadiens and Acadiens errants.
They are anxious for news from home: has someone attended to their temporarily
abandoned house and farm; did Papa and Maman know that their son had injured his eye
with an axe, or that he was going to get married. Oh and did they receive the money?
74 Jean de Bonville, La presse québécoise de 1884 à 1914. Genèse d’un média de masse, Québec, Presses del’Université Laval, 1988 : Chapitre 1 « Population, économie, transports et communications » : p. 9-38.
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Voice, at times suppressed but always full of life, and not exempt of practical concerns is
present in the millions of letters that traverse the Atlantic, and Pacific, between home
front and battlefront during both world wars. A letter then as now signified a tangible
link, for it was an object that, unlike a long-distance phone-call, could be folded, fondled,
and worshipped. The voice in these interpersonal corresponding networks, in war as in
peacetime, when taken in the aggregate, amounts to a significant volume of mail, of
communication; a huge body of raw material warranting further study and reflection. The
voice is an important one for us as historians of communication and as human beings. It
is implacable, it demands attention, for it comes straight from the heart.