Borderline Benefits: Take Two - Postal History Sunday

Welcome, once again, to Postal History Sunday!  Take a moment and throw those worries into the kitchen scraps bucket and take them out to the chickens.  Chickens don't seem to have many worries, so maybe they can handle them a bit better than we can.

Next week will be the THIRD anniversary of the first Postal History Sunday.  That's got me feeling a little nostalgic, so I thought I would edit and add to one of the earlier entries.  I chose this one because this publication in February of 2021 received responses that led me to realize there actually were a number of people enjoying Postal History Sunday.  It was at that point where this project morphed from "maybe a few people will find some enjoyment here" to "oh my goodness, some people really ARE finding these enjoyable."

And we're still plugging along as we enter the third year.  We'll talk a bit about the future of Postal History Sunday at the end of today's entry - for those who have interest.

An 1855 internal letter between two locations in Belgium

Internal Letter Mail vs Foreign Letter Mail

Let's start with a basic letter from one town in Belgium to another town in Belgium.  As a postal historian I refer to this as either internal letter mail or domestic letter mail.  This particular folded letter was mailed in November of 1855 from Anvers (Antwerp) to a small town named Chokier near Liege.  The price for mailing this item was 20 centimes.

Internal letter mail rates in Belgium at that time were based on both weight and distance, but I don't want to distract from the point I am trying to make here, so I'm not going to talk about the distance factor.  The cost of a letter weighing no more than 10 grams was 20 centimes for this distance - which makes this a simple letter.  We refer to an item as a simple letter when it fulfills the requirements for a single rate of postage.

Foreign letter mail, on the other hand, required the interaction of two postal services in order to get a letter to its destination.  Each postal service was concerned that they receive compensation for their services and the postal agreements in the 1800s (until 1875) were often quite complex.  In fact, there were several countries that failed to have postal agreements with some of their neighbors.

When there was an agreement, you would typically get something like this:

A foreign letter from Belgium to France (1859)

This is a another folded letter that started out in Anvers (Antwerp) in October of 1859.   If you would like to learn more about this particular letter and the addressee M. Evrard, you can take this link to another Postal History Sunday.

You might notice the Anvers postal marking at the top right for Oct 14, which was applied by the post office in that city.  There are two markings in the top center.  One is the P.D. marking we talked about in this October 2020 Postal History Sunday entry*.  We learned there that the box with the "P.D." tells us that this item was "payée à destination," which translates to "paid to destination."  

The other marking reads "Belg. Amb. Calais E" around the outer ring of the circle.    This is an exchange marking that shows where the letter left the custody of the Belgian mail service and entered the purview of the French mail service.  In this case, the transfer occurred on a mail car on the train that went from Calais to Paris in France.

To be perfectly clear, it is possible that the mailbag was opened at some point after this transfer.  The purpose was to document when and where the transfer of ownership or responsibility for this mail item took place.  It is at this point that the item officially entered their ledgers (so to speak).

The cost of this letter was 40 centimes for every 10 grams in letter weight.  So, this was a simple foreign letter from Belgium to France.  The December 1857 postal agreement between these two countries dictated that distance would NOT play a role in the cost of a letter - with one important distinction - which we will discuss in the next section.   

Isn't it a relief to know that we're following some sort of plan today?

*if you happen to take the link for the October 2020 PHS, it is very interesting to note how different it is from this entry and most that follow it.

Neighbors in Different Countries

Could you imagine living just a couple of kilometers from the border between France and Belgium?  Let's say that you have friends who live just down the road, but that is officially in another country.  You do business with people in the next town over, but they also live in another country.  How would you feel if you had to pay 20 centimes for a letter destined to someone 5 kilometers to the North and then pay 40 centimes for a similar letter to someone 1 kilometer to your South just because they were on the other side of the border?

Yeah, me too.

A foreign letter with the reduced border postage rate (Belgium to France)

There were plenty of business interests in southern Belgium and northeastern France and there was likely plenty of pressure to recognize this issue.  The postal agreement provided for a discounted rate if a piece of letter mail crossed the border and the distance (in a straight line) was 30 km or less from origin post office to destination post office.  The distance for the letter above from Courtrai (Belgium) to Lille (France) is right around 30 kilometers, so this letter qualified for the reduced rate.

Actually, the agreement made it even easier for postal clerks to be able to determine what destinations qualified for this reduced rate.  The postal convention listed the locations of post offices that qualified (you can click to see a larger version of the picture).  This excerpt shows the French post offices.

The postal instructions of the time likely provided each of these post offices a list of Belgian destinations that would qualify for the special border rate.  So, all a postal clerk had to do was look at the list.  If it was on there, the special rate applied.  If the destination wasn't listed, they would mark the letter as short paid.

In any event, neighbors who wanted to mail things to someone in another country wound up paying the same rate as the first letter that was internal mail and half the amount the second piece of foreign letter mail required.

The Dutch and the Belgians

A simple foreign letter from Belgium to the Netherlands

The Netherlands and Belgium had similar arrangements for border settlements.  Shown above is an 1868 letter from Bruxelles (Brussels) in Belgium to Vlaardingen in the Netherlands.  The rate for mail from Belgium to the Netherlands was 20 centimes for every 10 grams in weight.  There was no distance component to the mail rate between these two countries at this time other than the special border rate.

An example of the special border rate from Belgium to the Netherlands

If the origin and the destination were close by, this rate was cut in half!  The 1869 folded letter shown above only has a 10 centime stamps for an item mailed from Liege, Belgium (yep, that marking is hard to read!) to Maestricht in Holland.  You will notice that, even though these letters traveled a short distance, they still have a PD marking to indicate that the postage was paid for a letter between nations.  This may have qualified for a reduced rate, but it still had to be processed as a piece of foreign letter mail.

An interesting thing that I have noticed as I look for items like this is that these reduced rate items are far less common than the regular rates between these countries.  And, because they are less common, it is more difficult to find examples that are nicer looking.  

But, why would these be less common?  It's a simple matter of mathematics.  Without doing actual calculations, it would be safe to say that less than 5% of the population for each country lives inside of the area that could qualify for the reduced rate.  On top of that, not all of the mail leaving those areas would go TO a destination that also qualified for the reduced rate.  I think it would be safe to estimate that no more than 1% of all of the letter mail that was sent between Belgium and France or 2-3% for Belgium and the Netherlands would have qualified for these rates.

Huh.  I think that explains it!

Now, if you want a real challenge, try to find examples of an overweight letter that used the border rate!  That's a truly elusive item.

But, sometimes you are lucky enough to find things that others don't.  Here is an example of a border letter rate from the Netherlands to Belgium in 1867.  Each Dutch cent was equal to two Belgian centimes.  So, it cost 5 Dutch cents for a border letter.  You might notice that stamp has a marking that reads "Franco," which happens to be Holland's preferred marking to indicate a letter was paid.  The big difference here is that the Dutch actually used the Franco marking for internal letter mail too, so it is not necessarily a hint that this was a special border rate item.

Know A Good Thing When You See It

The root of these special border rates probably comes from the fact that most postal services included distance as an element for determining postal rates.  The further something had to travel, the more expensive it became.  That certainly makes sense if transportation is your biggest expense.

So, the idea of a special border rate was not really an innovation.  Instead it was a holdover from postal rate systems that required a distance component to determine how much postage was required.  The idea that the rate would stay the same for all distances EXCEPT border mail was the real innovation  that we see much more often in Europe starting in the late 1840s.  Improved transportation methods via rail was resulting in lower transportation costs.  So, the justification for distance-based rates was no longer as pertinent as it had been. 

A simple foreign letter from Switzerland to France

Here is a folded letter mailed in 1862 from Switzerland to France.  The normal rate to mail an item was 40 rappen for every 7.5 grams, regardless of distance.  You will notice the exchange marking in red shows that control of the letter was transferred at Pontarlier (France).  France and Switzerland both used the PD markings to show the receiving nation that the letter was fully paid.

You might notice the red Pontarlier marking has a number "3" in the outer circle.  This is a control marking that tells us the letter was taken out of the bag in Paris and the hand stamp was struck on the letter there.  However, they knew how this letter crossed the border and used a marking that provided the proper tracking.

A special border rate letter from Switzerland to France

And here is an 1860 letter that shows a PD marking and a red exchange marking at Fernex (France).  The letter was mailed in Geneva, which was just across the border from Fernex (Ferney).  Clearly, this is a situation where a border rate should apply, and it does.  Only 20 rappen (1/2 the normal rate) was required.

If Ferney sounds familiar to some of you, you might recognize it better as "Ferney-Voltaire."  The philosopher, Voltaire, purchased the land around the small hamlet of Ferney in 1759.  Once travel is restored, you could go visit his chateau and the community that is part of Voltaire's legacy.  

So, How Do You See It?

That brings me to the last point.  How does a person, such as myself, notice that a letter could qualify for the borderline letter rate - no matter what pair of countries and regardless of the time in history?

The first thing is that I need to know what a normal piece of internal letter mail for the time period looks like.

A simple internal letter for Switzerland in 1864

This internal letter in Switzerland was mailed in Romoos.  It cost 10 rappen (or 10 centimes) to mail and the markings on the cover simply show its travels inside the country.

Most internal letter mail in Switzerland during this time period will have a 10 centime/rappen stamp.  So, if I were to see a letter with that stamp, my first assumption is that it is a piece of domestic letter mail.

A simple foreign letter from Switzerland to Italy in 1867

And here is an 1867 letter from Horgan, Switzerland, to Genoa, Italy.  The rate between nations was 30 centimes/rappen per 10 grams and a PD marking was put on the letter by the Swiss to let the Italians know that they did collect the proper amount of postage.  All in all, this is a pretty normal looking letter between these two countries for that time period.

So, I bring you this one:

A 10 centime stamp, but a P.D. on marking at the top center?

This one was mailed in Splugen in 1865 and has a Swiss 10 centime/rappen stamp applied on it to pay the postage.  The person who offered this item for sale listed it as a piece of "domestic letter mail" because that is what most 10 centime blue stamps in Switzerland were used for.  

What told me to look closer?

You can see it too - it's the PD marking on the cover.  Most post offices during that time did not use a PD marking unless it was a piece of foreign mail.  That is not always true.  Let me remind you that the Netherlands used the "Franco" marking on internal mail as well as foreign mail.  But, it was enough to make me look closer at this item.

Splugen is both a settlement and a mountain pass in the Alps near the Swiss/Italian border.  The hard part was trying to figure out the destination.  The address panel on the front maybe reads "Clafau" or "Clafen," but I couldn't be sure.

 

The back of the folded letter in question - can you read this hand-writing or the postmark?

The reverse shows a receiver postmark for Chiavenna, which is located just South of the border, which clearly makes it a piece of border mail.  After some searching, it turns out Chiavenna is also known as Claven, Kleven and Clavenna depending on the language.  It is just another case where the spelling of a location could be different depending on the person's background writing the address.  We could talk about that more, but I think that could be a Postal History Sunday all its own.

Thank you for joining me this week.  I hope you have a wonderful remainder of the weekend and a positive and fulfilling week to come.  Maybe you had a chance to relax for a few moments today and you learned something new.  If you have questions for this or past blogs or suggestions for future PHS blog posts, feel free to send them my way - you can use the contact form on the ride side of this blog.  

 

And now - if you want to gaze into the crystal ball that holds the future of Postal History Sunday, read on.

 

Looking into the Future

 

Perhaps the most common question or comment I have received during the past year of Postal History Sunday is something along the lines of "how long will you continue with the weekly Postal History Sunday blog?"   Or, maybe it's been more of a "please don't stop with the Postal History Sunday blogs." 

I certainly appreciate the sentiment.  It does help to know that the work is valued by others.  The most difficult part of Postal History Sunday is finding the time - and sometimes the motivation - every week to keep the project going.  The growing season can be extremely difficult because the farm requires a significant amount of my attention and my off-farm job doesn't just go away because the farm needs me too.

So, some of you may have noticed that I sometimes go back to a much older entry and I rework and improve it - just like I did this time around.  There are multiple reasons for this.  First and foremost, I continue to learn new things - which means I can often find better words to more accurately describe what is going on with postal history items I have shown in the past.  Another obvious reason is that this is a way to produce a good Postal History Sunday when the energy or time is particularly low on a given week - this one was an exception because I planned on this particular nostalgic trip anyway!

Another reason that might interest many of you is that I am beginning to explore the possibility of creating a Postal History Sunday book.  Revisiting older posts gives me a chance to explore the material I already have so I can consider options for how that might happen - or if it could happen.

And finally, the only question many of you really wanted me to address is the one I still have not answered.  "How much longer will Postal History Sunday go?"

The honest answer is simply that I don't really know. 

So, here is your short answer.  For the time being, I don't see anything changing.  But, I am considering moving to an "every other week schedule."  Or, perhaps, I'll continue to offer a PHS every week, but one in three will be a reworking of an old PHS entry?  That's actually a bit of what has happened during the most difficult months this year for time management anyway.  In other moments, I've considered building a new site dedicated to PHS - moving to Wordpress so I have more flexibility in creating.  I even dabbled with the idea of doing Patreon or some other such thing.  In other words, I do not foresee PHS going away any time soon.  It just might have to change a bit so I can continue with it.  If you have suggestions, feel free to send them my way.

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Postal History Sunday is published each week at both the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  If you are interested in prior entries, you can view them, starting with the most recent, at this location.