The Post - Introductory note - Weaving Europe together

Today, someone who really tried hard could travel from downtown Warszaw to the center of Madrid in four hours. Nowadays, a telephone call or an e-mail message would go through in a matter of seconds from one part of the world to anywhere else on earth. This, of course, is quite new. Airplanes, cars, and telephones became widely available only in the course of the past century, trains and telegraphs began to function in the nineteenth century. Before that time, people had to go by foot or ride a horse. They could, of course, also sail the rivers, lakes and seas to their destination. For very urgent messages home they could use a carrier pigeon (which only knows the way back where it came from). There was nothing faster.

As a matter of fact, there were few paved roads, horsemen and wanderers mostly used tracks. Of course, in order to find your way, there were no GPS satellites, maps were rare, imprecise and costly; road signs few and far in between. You just had to find your way and ask. You travelled at your own peril: ‘highwaymen’ and robbers made the roads unsafe. After a bad harvest starving peasants roamed the land. Many travelers carried a saber or a pistol, or travelled in groups, accompanied by armed guards.
 
Travel at the time was, slow, perilous and exhausting. Yet, all over Europe people were on the way: soldiers, monks, students, tradesmen, crooks, artists and scholars, noblemen, adventurers, freaks and buffoons, and of course, the couriers of kings and noblemen carrying messages and the news across the realm and beyond. Imagine a map covered with threads indicating their itineraries: after a while a fabric would emerge, loose at first, then tighter and tighter. These travelers were actually weaving Europe together!

That is what interests us. The continent of Europe with so many villages and towns, so many clans and tribes, so many tongues and creeds, so many courts and capitals, was actually held together by these travelers and messengers that kept communication going.


When we think of Europe then and now, we think of so many conversations that went on about the great themes of the day, between people very far apart, through correspondences and encounters. Think of European civilization as a series of conversations between so many Europeans, each taking their turn to contribute their ideas and new participants joining at every turn so that the conversation could go on for dozens, even hundreds of years. In fact, that is what Europe still is today: a series of conversations carried on by correspondence or in personal encounters.

At one point in time, in 1516 to be precise something happened that would soon entirely transform travel and correspondence in Europe. The count of Thurn und Taxis had the idea of organizing a postal service based in Brussels, reaching to Rome, Naples, Spain, Germany and France by courier. Already in 1489 Ruggiano de Tassis founded a postal service in Italy and later in Innsbruck. The Taxis (Tassis) family held its exclusive position for centuries. What was so new about that? In the first place, it was a very fast connection at the time: a courier on horseback would ride as fast as his mount could carry him from one post to the next, there another messenger with a fresh horse would take over the mail bag and ride at top speed to the third staging post (and this is where the word ‘post’ comes from, current in so many European languages).
But the von Turn und Taxis added another novelty: until then only kings and great lords and princes could afford to send their private messengers across the continent with letters and money. The new postal service was available for anyone who would pay for a letter or parcel to be expedited. All of a sudden the burghers and landowners no longer depended on an acquaintance who happened to go that way, they could use the postal service to send their mail in a matter of days in stead of weeks or months.

The Von Thurn und Taxis family created postal connections all over the land. Their great innovation was not a technical one, the horses they used, the mailbags they sent, the staging posts, where riders and horses were changed, had been known and used for centuries. What they had invented was a new form of organization: the commercial messenger relay course. It was quite a feat of control, efficiency and discipline indeed to make it all run on time over such distances and with so many links in between. The von Thurn und Taxi family may not have been the first in history to set up a commercial postal relay course (see: Early Postal Systems at Wikipedia).

The European fabric quite suddenly became tighter and more closely woven. It was as if the continent had shrunk a bit, since distant towns could now be connected so much faster. Before too long, the postmen began to travel with carriages (the stage coach that they drove was the outcome of quite a few technical innovations, such as improved suspension and stronger wheels and axes). They took paying passengers along, where letters had travelled first, now persons followed in increasing numbers (and suddenly you realize where the word ‘taxi’ came from, familiar in so many languages of the world). Correspondences gained in frequency and speed, and so did encounters. The European conversations became all the more lively for it.

The von Thurn und Taxis gradually added itineraries to their postal network and extended the mail routes ever further. By 1700 a good part of the towns of central Europe were connected [1]. But even before, some governments had decided to set up similar postal services in their own territory.

When was your town or region first connected to a regular postal service and where did these links lead? Today messages travel at the speed of light with e-mail and mobile phones, people travel with planes and high speed trains. But the mail service still functions. Quite surprising, isn’t it? 

Talk to your friends what messages do you send by post, by e-mail, by text messages on your mobile phone? What are the differences in using the different ways of communication and so on...

Notes

1. See for instance: Behringer, W., 2005

 References

 * Behringer, W., 2005. Von der Gutenberg-Galaxis zur Taxis Galaxis. Die Kommunikationsrevolution - ein Konzept zur besseren Verst?ndnis der Frühen Neuzeit. In: Burkhardt, J. und Werkstetter, Chr. hrgs. Kommunikation und Medien in der Frühen Neuzeit. Beiheft 41. München: Oldenbourg. [online] Available Google Books.
 * Behringer, W., 2003. Im Zeichen des Merkur. Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolution in der Frühen Neuzeit. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte in Göttingen, Band 189. Göttingen: Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
* Behringer, W., 1990. Thurn und Taxis, Die Geschichte ihrer Post und ihrer Unternehmen. München, Zürich.