Postal Culture in Europe, 1500–1800, by Jay Caplan

Abstract

In reading thousands of letters by and to Rousseau and Voltaire, Jay Caplan (a specialist of the French Enlightenment) became fascinated by the ways in which the postal system worked and was viewed at the time. This sparked the writing of this book, an exploration of both the physical infrastructure and the literary representation of the post. The book’s six chapters are accordingly divided into two parts. The first provides a concise overview of the mechanisms for, the material conditions of and the censorship over the circulation of letters in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Caplan traces the expansion of increasingly rapid and reliable public services for the transportation of letters in bags or malles (from which mail), carried in relays (or posts). He focuses on three geographical areas—the Empire, Britain and, especially, France. For each he rightly distinguishes between country-wide postal communication, with its reliance on public roads, and intra-urban mail, a late development connected with the rise of large metropolises (until then, one would have to deliver a letter oneself or through a servant inside cities). Although he does not venture into social history, Caplan mentions the diverse array of men, and some women, who enabled the post to work: rich contractors, managers of individual post offices, the couriers who did the riding and the mailmen who delivered the letters. In line with abundant (if scantily quoted) recent research on the materiality of texts, Caplan usefully considers the use of paper and pen, the functional and aesthetic choices implied when folding, addressing and sealing a letter, and the all-important question of the cost of sending mail—or, rather, receiving it since, with the exception of Britain’s pioneering London Penny Post beginning in 1680, postage was generally paid on delivery. This was a positive incentive for the system to work, but one with negative implications for famous people who, like Voltaire and Rousseau, were forced to publish advertisements to discourage fan mail. Caplan agrees with other historians that the main change in the early modern period was not so much in the speed, but in the quantity and regularity of the system. He also devotes a chapter to the censorship of letters and the infamous black cabinets that were precious surveillance mechanisms for European rulers. Here he discusses the theoretical reasoning justifying the state’s authority to pry into private secrets, and the emergence of an opposite notion of the right to privacy.