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France's postal service has a very long history. Dating back to the Roman empire, it developed into a public service as early as the 17th century, and is still partly a state monopoly. The postal service has also played a major role in the development of transportation in France, and, since the 19th century, in the history of the French financial system. The 20th century has been a time of institutional and technological modernization.
The history of the postal service in France goes back to the time of Julius Caesar, who mentions in his De Bello Gallico a mail service running along the Rhone valley in Gaul. The province then benefited from Emperor Augustus's creation of the cursus publicus, which was at first restricted to carrying administrative mail. Private messages were carried by tabellarii, personal slaves or freedmen in the service of patrician families. During the Middle Ages, the state postal service disappeared, giving way to various private mail services. Messages were carried between abbeys by monks; the messengers of the University of Paris carried letters between the University's numerous foreign students and their families in Europe, and aristocrats and rich merchants such as Jacques Coeur employed messengers for their private correspondence. Messengers were appointed by municipalities, initially restricted to carrying mail between municipal officials, but by the 14th and 15th centuries they were also entrusted with private letters. The royal postal service remained one of many postal services for a long time. King Louis XI, who reigned from 1461 to 1483, reintroduced the Roman post house system, a relay system whereby horses could be changed along the route. King Louis XII, who reigned from 1498 to 1515, established such relays every seven leagues along royal roads. In 1533 permanent postal routes were created between France, England, and Switzerland.
On May 8, 1597, a royal edict created relais de louage, a stagecoach service intended for private use. This system was merged with the poste aux cheveux in 1602. The controleur général of the posts, Guillaume Fouquet de la Varane, appointed in 1595, played a major part in establishing a royal monopoly on the collection, carriage, and delivery of mail, with varying rates according to weight and destination. However, Louis XIII, who reigned from 1610 to 1643, gradually contracted the service to individuals in an attempt to raise funds for the royal treasury. During the reign of Louis XVI--from 1643 to 1715--various post-related positions were sold as special offices. Later, however, under the influence of minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the superintendent of the posts, Jérome de Nouveau, sought to abolish postmasters' offices. This took place in 1662. In 1668 the secrétaire de la guerre (minister of war), François-Michel Letellier, marquis of Louvois, took the role of superintendent of the posts, left vacant after the death of de Nouveau in 1665.
Louvois entirely reorganized the postal service, placing it under two authorities. The superintendent, a government minister, was to set postage rates, while the fermier général was contracted by the royal treasury to administer the postal service. The first contract for the latter function was drawn up between the state and the Pajot and Rouillé families, who occupied this position for more than 50 years. The ferme générale included more than 800 post offices in France as well as offices in Rome, Genoa, Turin, and Geneva. There were six postal routes, covering the six major French highways, along which mail was carried by postcoaches. In 1738 the Grimod and Thiroux families took on the role of fermier généralé, which they retained until the 1789 revolution. During this period post was delivered between towns but not within them. The poste aux chevaux (horse post) was operated by postmasters who ran posthouses--these were often inns--and were responsible for carrying mail, while there were around 1,000 post offices in France, headed by salaried directors, which were responsible for collecting and dispatching correspondence. In 1759 C. H. Piarron de Chamousset obtained from the king the right to undertake local postal delivery in Paris. The service proved so profitable that the crown soon decided to recover the rights and to extend local delivery throughout France. The so-called Petite Poste (intra-town post) was extended by royal decree in 1786 throughout France, eventually covering all French municipalities. The 1789 revolution did not affect the mail service until 1793, when it became a state-owned agency. Financial difficulties prompted the government to revert to the contract system several years later. State control of the posts was established definitively in 1804 with the creation of a directorate general under the Ministry of Finance. Antoine-Marie Chamans, count of La Valette, remained in charge of the posts from this date until the fall of the First Empire in 1815, when he gained a place in history by escaping from prison, disguised in his wife's clothes, the day before he was due to be executed.
The Restoration period brought several major changes in the postal service. A royal decree of February 24, 1817, made possible the introduction of the money order, which allowed funds to be delivered at one post office upon receipt of an order transmitted from another. From April 1, 1830, postal collections and deliveries were made every second day from and to homes in every municipality in France. This was the first appearance in France of the modern postman, and brought the end of rural isolation. During the reign of Louis-Philippe, mail transport was accelerated by the introduction of the railway. In 1842 mail was carried on the Strasbourg-Basel line. In 1845 mail began to be sorted in designated wagons during the train journey from city to city. Soon this method of transport replaced the horse post, which officially ended in 1873. A major improvement was due to Etienne Arago, a famous scientist and director of the posts under the Second Republic, who was responsible for the introduction of the fixed postage rate and the postage stamp, based on the English innovation of the penny post. On August 24, 1848, the National Assembly decreed that a single postage rate should be charged regardless of distance, though varying with the weight of the letter. In December 1848 another decree marked the introduction of the first three French postage stamps. In the first year after the reform, postal traffic jumped from 122 million to 158 million letters per year. During the Second Empire, rapid improvements were made in postal services abroad, especially by boat, when regular postal links were established with Indochina in 1861; the United States, Mexico, and the West Indies in 1864; and South America and West Africa in 1866.
After a short period during the seige of Paris by the German army in 1870 when a pigeon post operated, the postal service extended its role during the Third Republic. The postal service, controlled by the Ministry of Finance, and the telegraph service, controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, were combined under a single administration, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraph, headed by Adolphe Cochery. Later, however, the postal and telegraph services were attached to several other ministries until 1906, when an undersecretariat of posts and telegraph services (P & T) was reestablished as a single ministry within the government. On April 9, 1881, a new state institution was created, the Caisse Nationale d'Epargne (National Savings and Loans), with a separate budget, which was supervised by the posts and telegraphs undersecretariat. Savers could use any post office in the country as a savings bank. At the same time, this gave the state vast sums of money to finance large social and housing programs. In 1900 deposit accounts at the Caisse Nationale d'Epargne totaled FFr3.5 billion. Following the example of Austria (1883), Switzerland (1906), Germany (1909), and Belgium (1913), under the law of January 7, 1918, the French posts and telegraphs undersecretariat was allowed to operate a current account service. In the face of violent opposition from the French banks, the undersecretariat was not allowed to offer interest-bearing accounts. The funds accumulated by postal current accounts were placed in the custody of the Public Treasury.
In the 20th century, an airmail service was introduced. The first attempt to transport mail by air took place in July 1912, near Nancy in Lorraine. The airplane, carrying 40 kilograms of mail, flew for 17 minutes. On October 15, 1913, the same pilot, Lieutenant Ronin, flew from Paris to Bordeaux carrying an urgent letter to the steamship Peru, bound for the West Indies. During World War I the development of airmail services was suspended. In 1918 the Paris-Le Mans-St. Nazaire route began to be exploited for the use of the U.S. army. Several state-subsidized private firms carrying airmail, such as the Compagnie Aéropostale and the Compagnie Farman, appeared in 1919. At the end of the year, the pilot and airplane-builder Pierre Latéco&egave;re made the first international airmail delivery, to Barcelona, Spain. The service was soon extended to Rabat, Morocco, by way of Alicante and Malaga. In 1922 the pilot Maurice Nogues established the first commercial Paris-Bucharest-Constantinople-Ankara airlink, and in February 1930 the first postal airlink between France and Indochina. Jean Mermoz made the first direct mail-carrying flight between France and South America on May 12, 1930. On September 2, 1930, Dieudonné Costes and Maurice Bellonte flew from New York to Paris without stopping. In 1939 the airmail service consisted of four routes covering eleven French municipalities with daily flights.
The French P & T was affected severely by World War II: by the end of the war, 25% of post offices, 50% of mailwagons, and 75% of Paris's post vans had been lost, destroyed, or stolen. Old German warplanes were used to start up airmail services again. During the 1950s and 1960s the P & T concentrated on improving existing services, introducing motorized postal delivery and mechanical sorting. Postal codes, included in addresses to facilitate sorting, were introduced in 1964. In 1973 the first automatic sorting center opened in Orléans. In 1961 a helicopter service was introduced to deliver mail to the islands off Brittany. At the same time, postal services began to be rationalized; first Sunday and then Saturday afternoon deliveries were withdrawn.
It is only since the 1970s that national P & Ts have begun to experience competition from new communication techniques. Between 1976 and 1985, international mail traffic decreased by 10% because of growing recourse to telecommunications. Meanwhile European Economic Community (EEC) regulations were introduced to control competition between data and written material transmission services. This led to the French government's decision to separate telecommunication and postal services. The reform law of 1971 separated the Direction Générale des Télécommunications (DGT) from the Direction Générale de la Poste (DGP). In 1990 the two entities adopted new names--La Poste and France Télécom respectively--in recognition of their new legal status. La Poste and France Télécom are now exploitants autonomes de droit public, state-owned firms which are largely autonomous. The powers of the ministry in charge of these are now clearly defined: general regulation of the sector, planning contracts between La Poste and the state, and protection of employees' status as civil servants. Postal and telephone rates are no longer set by the ministries of finance and posts and telecommunications. The financial status of La Poste is markedly different from that of the DGP. In 1923 a law had been passed that separated the budget of the postal services from that of the state. This, however, allowed the state to levy large sums of money from the mail service's profits in order to subsidize government electronic and space programs. The 1990 reform law granted La Poste a totally independent budget. The question of reduced postal rates for the press, which represent half the public subsidies given in total to that sector, has also been solved by the reform, which obliged the state to contribute to press rates subsidies.
Other subsidies have to be found to finance loss-making post offices in rural areas; in 1990 there were 17,000 post offices, 12,000 of which were based in areas with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.
The 1990 reform aimed to support the structurally loss-making postal services by developing La Poste's expertise in financial services. La Poste's share of current account funds has been diminishing steadily for 40 years; it fell from 30% of total current account funds in 1950 to 12% in 1988. Traditional savings products are also facing serious competition from new stock-exchange-oriented savings products. The 1990 reform authorized La Poste to act as an insurance company in offering all types of personal insurance. A major difference remains between La Poste and the French banks, however; the first cannot make real estate loans unless the borrower has previous savings, nor consumer loans, the two types of loans for which there is growing demand. Meanwhile, the P & T began to develop a marketing policy, since it was allowed to establish individualized contracts for mail services with major private clients, generally corporate. The 1980s were characterized by the development of new services: telecopy (facsimile, or fax) services were launched in 1981. Chronopost, a rapid-delivery service for delivery of correspondence and goods with guaranteed time limits began in 1986. The P & T started to explore services such as gift or advertisement delivery or company mail, whereby special prices could be negotiated for large mailings. In 1990 computerized scanners were installed for post-code sorting.
Although its international financial services are not extensive, La Poste plays a major part in solving international mail problems through its participation in the Universal Postal Union, created in 1878 after the Bern Convention of 1874 signed by 22 states including France. La Poste is also an active member of the European Posts and Telecommunications Conference, the EEC Posts working groups, and the UNIPOST Agency, while its specialized subsidiaries contribute to assisting with third-world postal problems.
Principal Subsidiaries: SOFIPOST; SFMI CHRONOPOST (66%); SECURIPOST SA; SOMEPOST; MEDIAPOST SA (70%); POLYMEDIAS (85%); SOGEPOSTE (49%); AEROPOSTALE (40%).
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