So welcome everybody, and it's a real pleasure for us to welcome you at the UPU at Quarters to celebrate and kick-start the celebration of our 150th anniversary. The UPU was created 150 years ago here in Bern, and we are kicking off our celebrations that will happen all through the year with this very special, a unique event. To kick-start this event, we have an opening ceremony, an opening session, and I would like to call and invite to the podium Mr Metoki, who is the Director General of the Universal Postal Union to give us his opening remarks. Mr Metoki. Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for coming. And first of all, I would like to apologize for starting this meeting, this event a little bit today. I rely on the CIS transportation system, probably through our 150-year history is also common. It's also one of the things that you will really remember this event as a real memory. So, Excellencies, Distinguished speakers and participants, Distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends, it is my honor and pleasure to welcome you all to this first in the sense of a series of events that will mark the UPU's 100th anniversary year. Over two days, our first ever historian Kurokyun will delve into the rich story of our organization under the theme, achieving a single postal territory, a global promise, past and present. Founded in 1874, the UPU's commitment to create a global single postal territory represented one of the very first examples of multilateralism. For a century and a half, the UPU and its member countries have set the benchmark for international collaboration. Our 150-year commitment to fostering global communication stands as a testimony to the enduring strength of multilateralism. Our organization provides a framework which thousands, borders, cultures and political differences to unite us with a shared vision to deliver to everyone every field. It is our pleasure to bring together historians, academics and theorists for the first time to share the origin story of this cooperation. Our event will provide a rare opportunity to shed light on an area that has long remained in the shadows. The UPU's history offers researchers a rich source of study covering economic, social, cultural and political domains. Our speakers will tell us why and how the UPU, funded by 22 nations, grew to connect 192. They will consider the UPU's contribution to global globalization. They will touch upon its resilience through continued technological advancements. They will inspire us to renew our commitment to a global promise to enable communication and empower people across nations. I would like to thank our participants for putting a spotlight on the UPU within the academic world. We will all benefit from the knowledge you exchanged today and tomorrow. Your views on the past will enrich our present knowledge and help to shape an even brighter future. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to our partners, Francis Rapost Group and the historian committee for the post, as well as the series laboratory. It is thanks to the initiative, expertise and financial support that we are able to host this event today. Lastly, let me express my gratitude to the UPU team that has organized this unique event. I wish you enjoyable discussions. Please enjoy the first event of our 150 year anniversary. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Thank you very much Mr. Metoki. Before we go to the second speaker, just a couple of technical announcements. So for the interpretation, you have your headset here and the channel one is for French channel two for English. Channel zero is the language we speak through the mics. Secondly, I would like to welcome all the participants online. We have UPU TV on and we have many participants and viewers from all over the world that are watching us right now. So I would like to welcome them. Now I would like to ask the technician to play for us a video message from Mr. Philippe Val, who is the chairman and CEO of Rapost France. Rapost France has played a very critical role in helping us putting up this event. So very nicely Mr. Val has sent us a welcome message that I would like the technician to play now for us. Mr. Director-General, ladies and gentlemen, historians, their postal employees from all over the world, it is a great honour for me to open this first colloquium on the history of the Universal Postal Union. This union is the second oldest intergovernmental organisation in the world after the International Telegraph Union, which became the International Telecommunication Union. The Universal Postal Union is older than the United Nations organisation. Remarkably, it was created in 1874 from the Union of the Post in Bern and its missions have remained unchanged since then. Its founders expected economic, social and political benefits. Thanks to the Universal Postal Union, we have developed regulations, procedures and standards that have enabled the interconnection of the different postal networks around the world. The Universal Postal Union for several years has been developing network solutions, IT solutions and digital solutions to facilitate this interconnection. This interconnection is difficult because a common framework had to be created for countries whose social, economic and political interests were different, even divergent. This worldwide postal forum, the Universal Postal Union had to overcome divergences and wars and also to enable posts to face up to competition from new stakeholders. So this is why it's very interesting to ask why the Universal Postal Union was created. The Universal Postal Union is a forum for the posts. It is an affirmation of the principle of multilateralism to which France is very attached. It is the way to debating, seeking convergence and asserting common interests. It is also the way of bringing people and nations closer together. For La Post, questioning its history, La Post itself was created in the 15th century, is a necessity. And to question its history, La Post created a committee for history and works with France's leading research organisation, the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, the CNRS. For this reason, I think it's very important for La Post and the UPU to join forces to organise this colloquium, which is the first in the postal world. Working on history is a very important way of highlighting the renewal of postal historiography. This renewal is all the more important as the posts face up to the digital revolution and reinvent themselves. I am sure that thanks to your work, the Universal Postal Union will be able to transform itself to prepare for the future and I wish you all the very best in preparing for these challenges of tomorrow. Thank you, all of you. Thank you very much, Mr Wall. I would now like to give the floor to Donar Labori, the scientific director of this colloquium. He is a research director at the CNRS and he will lay the basis for the scientific discussions of today and tomorrow. You have the floor, Leonard. Director General, Excellencies, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen that are honouring us with your presence. So we are gathered here to shed light on 150 years of postal co-operation, a sesquicentenary. 150, that's an impressive number. It's more than twice the average life expectancy at birth in the world today with the disparities that we all know. And if we can look at the international organisations we can compare the UPU to, it's a lot more than their average age. Many organisations that were created at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century have since long disappeared. So there is currently a research being carried out to try to look back on the traces that they left behind and it is very interesting. But you'll agree with me that organisations that have survived such as the UPU for 150 years are also worth studying, especially looking into their historical legacy. So there have been regular commemorative celebrations concerning the UPU, but relatively little historical work. So I would like to propose we look into four commemorative events that shed light on both the long process of compiling an institutional memory for the organisation and by contrast could contribute to what we can or show what we can contribute through this conference. The first event dates back to 1897, that year at the Congres. It wasn't a anniversary but a tribute to someone who had passed away, Anish von Steffen, namely a Prussian postmaster, director of the post office of the North German Confederation and the German Empire. The man who was nicknamed the Bismarck of the post office had just died in Berlin a few days earlier before embarking for Washington where he was to attend his fifth Congress. He was and still is regarded as the visionary founding father of the Universal Postal Union. The organisers in Washington decided to cover the chair. He was to occupy with a veil. Well, you might have noticed, but the veil has now gone, but the room was named after. The room we're currently in was named after him. And the second commemoration was shot afterwards in 1900 during the euphoria of the turn of the century to celebrate not the 26th anniversary of the signing of the treaty, but the 25th anniversary of its entry into force. It was then decided together to find out Monument in Bern. The competition was won by the French sculptor René de Saint-Marceau. His allegory of the world postal traffic can still be seen today and inspired the Union logo. It is actually on the stamp that you have on the little card on your tables. It inspired the logo of the Union. It represents a globe that is lifted above the ground by the momentum of five figures that are giving each other a hand. And swirling around a letter and what would also have is the woman seated watching over the dance very calmly and I'll come back to that later. It doesn't appear on the logo. So for the 50th anniversary of the signing of the treaty in 1924, it was the delegates themselves in flesh and blood that were the actual monuments. There you see them again on the postcard. The photograph showed them parading in Stockholm between the Parliament and the King's Palace, lined up two by two in a single line in alphabetical order of the different countries and in French in ceremonial dress. I don't believe we will today be marching down the Weltpoche-Dresse. I think the historians that will speak today will just in turn speak behind this lectern. And I will end this commemorative overview, which is incomplete because it does not mention the many philatelic events that took place and the exhibition prepared by Mr. Komp. Thank you to the members of the Scientific Advisory Board who have selected from the many proposals and who will be moderating the session. So I'd like to give a special thanks to Pascal Grisé who directed my thesis and recommended back then that I include postal issues, not telegraphic. So thank you because today's meeting is an outcome and a result of our ongoing exchanges on the matter. So if you agree, I'd like to hand the floor back over to you, to the chair, the next session. So without further ado, the floor is yours. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Leona. So we're going to start with our first panel. I think we've had a minor technical problem with the interpretation. Can the technicians tell me if it's been repaired? So our apologies, there were a few moments when there was a little problem with communication. Now I've got a little bit of bad news.   So now I open the floor for the first panel. Director-General, your excellencies, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very honoured to preside over this first session of our colloquium. The first speech we heard from the director-general and we heard from Mr Philippe Valland, also Leonor Labori. It really showed us the importance of this meeting. I'd like to thank the Universal Postal Union, the Switzerland. I'm a historian and in particular I look at the area of telecommunications and I'm a member of the Historic Committee for the History of the Postal Service. So this is a large world of information and communication which has impacted our society for so long, we could say from the time of antiquity. But if we think about it certainly from the 19th century in terms of technical developments I was able to look at work and research and area and research in particular in scientific diplomacy which is innovation diplomacy in English. We are here at the heart of one of the key elements of this diplomacy. The diplomacy of things we could say that. It impacts our society, international exchanges, there is transnational, national and international work involved. So this first session is looking at quite a larger period from the 18th to the end of the 19th century. So it's marked by two industrial revolutions from steam, power to electricity. We're going to look at the first elements of decolonization. The 19th century is a particularly complex period. It is in a world that is globalizing. And a world that even more than in the past is marked by the significance of technical systems of solidarity, of conflicts and tensions. The postal service is not just a single example there. Sometimes we think that in relation to telecommunications there is a far smaller technological dimension in the postal service. But that's not the case because it's linked to the development of transport, the steam locomotives and the engines. And where would we be without telegraphic communication and exchange of communication. There's a interconnectedness between the different forms of communication. And I don't want to delay our colloquium any further. But we have four panelists who are going to tell us a bit more about history, something that maybe wasn't covered so much in the past. We're going to look at Spain, we're going to look at Australia, Brazil and then we'll look at our institution itself with the Universal Postal Union. These are very different and complementary areas. And I think it's going to give us some food for thought and lead us into these two wonderful days of work, which will be very stimulating. So I'd like to invite up here to the podium panelists. So first of all Charlie Muller, Perola Godfelder and Diego Avaria. And the first presentation from Rocío Moreno Cabanillas. If I've understood all the information I've been given is going to be participating remotely so she'll be appearing online. Miss Rocío Moreno Cabanillas is a member of the University of Seville in Spain. And she will present a communication presentation she'll give us which looks at the transatlantic postal system in the 18th century within the Spanish Empire. So I will give her the floor and I hope that she is connected. Thank you. I don't think we've got her online. Maybe we could move on to Charlie Muller. Maybe you could take the floor first so that we make the most of our time. I will not follow the program set out but I'll give the floor to Charlie Muller who is based at New York University and she's going to present on the subject of Australia. The Southern Australia, if I fully understood, it's between looking at capitalism and colonial logics and the reform and development of the postal service. So if you could please join us and you have 15 minutes. For the slides do I. Okay. Alright, thank you so much. Thank you to the organizers of the conference. In this first slide I have an image from a 1870s book on world traffic and its means. And at the top you can see a photo of Roland Hill, the British postal reformer. It was designed by Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus to colonizing major figures and European colonialism underneath them is Joseph Russell, who was important in developing technologies for the steamship. And then at the bottom you have two major figures in European economics Adam Smith and Friedrich List. I think this was an interesting image to start with because it shows how already in the 1870s you had this idea of the postal reformer Roland Hill as like very central to thinking about capitalist and colonial global circulation. So Great Britain's Postage Act of 1839 and its creation of the uniform penny post was celebrated for introducing uniform pricing, prepayment in the form of stamps and greater affordability of the postal services in Britain. The reforms are largely attributed to Roland Hill. You can read a bit about him on the nice timeline over there. Roland Hill's ideas that were articulated in his 1837 pamphlet post office reform its importance and practicability. Sending mail went from an expensive often unreliable activity to a more standardized efficient and widely available service, which led to a spike in personal and business communication in Britain. By the 1870s, many of Hill's reforms were reproduced domestically in numerous countries, and they they were influential in the 1874 Treaty of Bern, creating the general postal union. Close attention has been paid to Hill's contribution to political economic thought. However, there's almost no attention paid to how Hill's thinking about state bureaucracy and political economy were informed by his involvement in theorizing and implementing colonization. His first pamphlet was titled Home Colonies, and a second more famous pamphlet post office reform was written while he served as Secretary of the South Australian Colonization Commission. Particular attention is paid to Hill in my talk, but this is to identify him as a window into the sort of political economic legal and scientific thinking of his time. He was informed and influenced by many key thinkers of his era like Jeremy Bentham, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and John Stuart Mill, all of whom show the nexus between colonialism, British political economy and 19th century reforms. By studying his intellectual network, I argue we gain new insights into the colonial and capitalist logics that informed the British 1839 postal reforms. This approach reveals the following things. First, the postal reform extended the commodity logic of abstraction into the realm of interpersonal communication. Second, this logic of abstraction was informed by thinkers like Jeremy Bentham, whose abstract notion of ownership was already rooted in a racialized thinking. Third, Hill's thinking around political economy and bureaucracy were both informed by his involvement in colonizing South Australia. His pamphlet post office reform's argument for uniform pricing mirrors the uniform pricing in Wakefield's schema of colonization that was followed in South Australia. Finally, the imagination of South Australia as a terra nullius wasteland was also crucial for Hill's thinking about creating the ideal conditions for capitalist exchange unencumbered by feudal remnants and corruption. I'm not too sure how to change the slide. Okay, great. So here you have the cover of Roland Hill's first pamphlet, Home Colonies. So his first pamphory into political economy was his 1832 Home Colonies, a sketch plan for the gradual extinction of populism. This pamphlet was written in response to various riots at the time and was Hill's attempt to influence debates around the reformation of the poor laws. In Home Colonies, Hill put forward a vision of rehabilitating and educating the proper classes to the virtues of private property by means of the creation of internal colonies, which, quote, meant cultivating empty land in Britain rather than overseas. Like Bentham, Hill initially opposed external colonies, seeing them as costly and financially irresponsible. In his Home Colonies pamphlet, we can already see Hill's attention to issues he would later take up in his post office reform. Both pamphlets put forward a Benthamite reformist vision, which sought to refine property laws and subject institutions to strict laws of the market in order to give all an equal chance. Home Colonies advocated for eliminating the feudal vestiges inside of Britain's property laws, which created barriers of privilege which brought property into disrepute and had led to recent rioting. In 1829, a few years before the publication of Home Colonies, Edward Gibbon Wakefield published a letter from Sydney, and you can see the cover of it here. Wakefield himself, a convict settler, criticized Australia's penal colonies as both evil and economic failures. This failure was attributed to the availability of inexpensive land which undermined capitalist stability to obtain sufficient inexpensive labor. Wakefield proposed a model where land would be sold at a high uniform price, and the sales of this land would contribute to an emigration fund to pay for conveyance of British laborers to the colony free of cost. This created a situation where capitalist accumulation would proceed more efficiently than in penal colonies since it ensured, quote, the supply of laborers be as nearly as possible proportioned to the demand for labor at each settlement. Wakefield's scheme, like the ideals espoused by Hill's pamphlet, was to quote historian Michael Perlman, a continuous affirmation of the need for government action to sustain the interests of capital. The survival of the state's role in creating an ideal capitalist condition would become central to Hill's post office reform. In 1833, Roland Hill met Wakefield in France. He quickly became impressed with Wakefield's plan for colonizing South Australia and was enticed with the promise of a future job. Hill saw Wakefield's scheme of colonization as addressing the concerns he laid out in his home colonies, but on a much wider and more ambitious scale. In 1833, Hill became secretary of the South Australia Association. So here you have a newspaper announcement of the creation of this association. It was a group lobbying parliament to approve plans for the colonization of South Australia. In 1834, parliament approved the colonization of South Australia and Hill was soon named secretary of the South Australian Colonization Commission. Following Wakefield's model, the act prohibited transportation of convicts to the colony. It established uniform pricing of land at one pound per acre and proceeds would go towards the creation of an emigration fund for suitable applicants. Finally, the act described the area to be colonized as consisting of quote, waste and unoccupied lands fit for the purpose of colonization. So from 1835 to 1839, Roland Hill served as the secretary to this South Australian Colonization Commission. In his position, he was stationed in London and was responsible for coordinating and surveying the surveying and selling of uniformly priced land as well as arranging safe transportation of immigrants. In executing these various responsibilities, Hill was singularly focused on eliminating corruption and inefficiency. In arranging the transportation of immigrants to South Australia, he found that often the shippers made excuses or sought to abuse the payment arrangements. In response, Hill instituted new standards for accuracy of measuring quality and quantity of immigrants. Hill's secretarial work was primarily concerned with selling uniformly priced land and the economics of quote, conveyance at the lowest rate. These two economic principles were also at the heart of the argument of the postal reforms that he would develop during the same period. The means by which he was doing all this work was primarily through the post. He sent a lot of letters from London to South Australia and he used the post to advertise the sale of land in newspapers. Here we have a few advertisements that are signed by him in various British newspapers announcing the sale of land at a uniform price and also announcing the availability of this immigration fund for people who are interested in applying. So, yeah, here you have announcements looking for a ship, announcements for the free emigration of laborers. And then this was the form that applicants could fill out if they wanted to be considered suitable workers eligible for the immigration fund to South Australia, and they would submit this form to Roland Hill. And so all of this was going on using the British postal system. The use of the postal service was so costly that under the subheading of difficulties encountered obstacles to be removed in the first report of the colonization commissioners for South Australia, written by Hill. Hill wrote a detailed request to the king asking to be, quote, relieved from the charges of stamp duty and postage. Hill's work as secretary of the colonization commission was important for his imagination of the possibilities of reform. The doctrine of Taranulia has created conditions for Hill to imagine a context for the creation of a capitalist society that was unencumbered by many of the entrenched issues and feudal inheritances in Britain, which are of central concern to his postal reforms. The entire colonization commission imagine South Australia as land belonging to no one for Hill, just like Torren's and historian Brina Bandar's account of the history of the Torren system, quote, The colony of Australia was a space unencumbered by the social relations of aristocracy by history by a past. The colony of Australia as a Taranulias provides a space for a radical break with the political and legal inheritances of England. So there's several key parallels between Hill's post office reform and the economic logic that guided the colonization of South Australia. These included uniform pricing, efficient conveyance, and an opposition to state subsidies and deficit. And both the, both the postal reform and the colonization of South Australia, the principle of uniform pricing was not for the sake of uniformity itself, but rather was based on the principle that quote prices should be related to costs. In the pricing of land in South Australia, there was uniformity to prevent fluctuations in land pricing and the uniform price was also indexed the cost of transporting working class settlers. And so the idea was that in buying land, upper class settlers were also paying for the available ready availability of many laborers to mix their labor with the land owned by these capitalist classes. Both Wakefield and Hills reforms on pricing also serve the ends of creating conditions for circulation that included working class involvement. Wakefield conceived of quote a self supporting system where the uniform pricing would allow working class people to join a settler society. And in Hill the uniform and more affordable pricing would create conditions where the postal service would be in reach of the poor and more numerous classes. Hill's postal reform share with Wakefield's model, the use of the state to create ideal capitalist conditions. Hill opposed the state's monopoly on the post, but he sought to reform the post to abide by commercial principles. Similarly, the South Australia colonizing commission made every attempt possible to quote, we can the powers that the imperial government could exercise on the colony. So this was a kind of the colonizing commission was kind of like a private model for colonizing South Australia with approval by the ground. Both Hill and Wakefield were in favor of circulation and conveyance, either immigrants or of letters by means of free enterprise rather than by state subsidy. Prior to the 1839 reforms, the British postal system was expensive, with rates widely varying depending on the destination within the country. Often mail was paid for by the recipient, which required postal workers to make repeated attempts to deliver mail and collect payment. The post was inefficient, expensive and largely a service used by upper class government officials and political elite. Roland Hill's reforms sought to rid the post of these privileges and inefficiencies, while maintaining what he saw as a sound economic principles without unjust hierarchies of feudalism. Hill subjected the circulation of mail to the same microeconomics scrutiny as other commodities. In his famous pamphlet, he compared the impact of high postage rates to the rates of consumption of other commodities, such as soap, tea, silk, coffee and cotton. All these goods had recently fallen in price, which had resulted in increased consumption. By analogy with commodities, reducing postage costs would actually increase the postal service revenue by increasing postage patronage. Hill was very critical of the fact that the government's monopoly allowed it to price postage at artificially high rates that would not be sustainable in a free market environment. Even the principle of uniform pricing was based on calculations of the cost of letter conveyance. Contrary to popular belief, Hill was not endorsing the idea that short distance letters should subsidize the equally priced long distance letters. He reflected on this misunderstanding of his position in his biography where he bemoans quote, This opinion erroneously attributed to me that funds may justly be applied to maintain special services which do not repay their own cost. I have held that every service should be at least self supporting. All beyond this, I have always regarded as contrary to the two principles of free trade as serving into the unsound and dangerous practice of protection. Historians of communication characterize Hill's reform as a revolutionary democratizing of information circulation. What I wish to emphasize here is that the postal reform specifically brought out a bourgeois revolution into the realm of communication. Hill sought to remove the vestiges of feudalism that marred the postal system and subject information to a commodity logic of abstraction. This can be seen in Hill's emphasis on microeconomic calculation and abstraction of mail into something exchangeable like all other commodities. This can also be seen in his hostility towards unjust privileges bestowed to political elite such as the franking system, which he's very critical of. I'll leave my concluding remarks. Thank you very much for this presentation which has told us about territories that I certainly was not very familiar with, but it shows us that there is a wealth of information and subjects related to communication. Now I hope our technology is now working and will be joined by Rossio Modena Cabani just from the University of Sevilla. Can I hear you? Well, it's always telecommunications that cause the problem. Postal services are fine. It's telecommunications that are the problem. The technical team told me, oh, good. So, Miss Rossio Modena Cabani just is going to give a presentation on the transatlantic postal system network in the 18th century under the Spanish Empire. I'm going to give you the floor. You have 15 minutes for your presentation. Thank you. Good morning. Okay, thank you very much for the presentation and thank you very much to the organization for invitation to participate. It's a very pleasure for me to be here. I'm talking about the organization of the postal service in the Spanish Empire in the 18th century that it's my topic of research science a lot of years ago. The communication was a crucial aspect to the functioning of the Spanish Empire. The circulation of information was essential in governing the territories and to maintain social, economic, political and cultural relation in this empire. The system that circulate information, as in the case of postal system, produced modification in policies, practice and networks. All these aspects were of fundamental relevance in formation and in maintenance of European empires. From the 16th century, there was an impulse toward a type of epistolary culture that was in line with the bureaucratic situation of the states in which writing and correspondence form an essential part of the government. The circulation of letters between different space and agents required the articulation of a postal service that act as a logistical medium that not only guaranteed the distribution of correspondence but also other goods such as money, merchandise, etc. The postal reform began in 17th, 18th century in the European empires, European governments enact numerous measures in order to control communication systems and institutionalize the post. This trend was further reinforced by the idea of administrative and social rationality adopted by imperial states in order to press forward their political, economic and social reform projects as well as to consolidate a solid and central site bureaucratic apparatus, with the postplate as central roles. European empires, such as Britain, Spain and Portugal, wanted governments to exercise control in this respective postal system throughout increased bureaucratic and reorganization. This is the case of British empires, Spanish empires and Portuguese empire. The British Empire established direct administration of the postal system between 1660 and 1711, with the Document Post Office Act was passed and the American colonies were incorporated into the British Empire Postal System which England, Ireland and Scotland. After the seven years war, the British government intensified all reform plans with the Post Office Act of 1765. In Spain, postal reform included the creation of a maritime postal system in 1764, online postal system inside of Spanish-American in 1769, both under the supervision of the Crown. In the Portuguese Empire, the establishment of the overseas post between Portugal and Brazil occurred in 1798, with the enactment of the regulation for the creation of the maritime post office between Portugal and Brazil which followed the pattern of the British and Spanish states. This showed that in postal meter, there were no difference between the various models of sovereignty, whether the state was under an absolute monarchy, has spent Spanish and Portuguese empire or a parliament system has the case of a British empire, they were passing the same goal, a government postal monopoly. In Spanish Empire, the postal reform began in 1764 under the context of the Bourbon Reinforce. Bourbon monarchy, in the Bourbon monarchy, there plans the innovation of the mail system that promised to allow the streaking of the Basis Spanish Empire by quickening communication and strengthening the bureaucratic chain of command. Nevertheless, this project encountered obstacles and resistance both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the overseas location in America. You can see the document called Reglamento Provisional del Correo Marítimo de España sus Indias Occidentales that determined the maritime postal routes and the organization management and transfer of overseas correspondence. In this document appeared this maritime postal route, which two routes. One, the packet board will reply from Spain, specifically for the port of Coruña in the north of Spain, or the first of each month to La Habana, this route was Carrera de La Habana. And another one was created in 1767, a different two monline routes, the partying of the 15 days of each month, but not considered with the Habana Carrera de La Habana. The ships were to sail from La Coruña to Buenos Aires. However, the timetable imposed by this document, the Provisional Regulation, was hardly ever respect by the packet boards. This was due to the lies and loss of mail caused by weather conditions, humanitarian causes, fraud, contraband, etc. The follow graphs saw the maximum and minimum times it took a packet board to run the Carrera de La Habana in the period between 1765 and 1777. Sorry, they confine a degree of irregularity in the packet board skewed. The maritime postal routes often did not comply with the provision of the regulation, causing irregular fluctuation on the overseas dispatch. The monthly sailing reflects the fact that official correspondence increased and had contacts between Spain and South America through the flexible dynamics of the new postal communication networks. The establishment of post office in strategic cities respond to the idea of a decentralization network of interconnect post office throughout the territory of the Spanish monarchy. This provision constituted the postal system in a tentacular apparatus that extends throughout the Spanish-American territory. You can see the postal routes between Cartagena de India and Santa Fe de Guota in the bar Royalty of New Granada in the 18th century. This is a main postal route in the South of America. The agents who participate in the transport of the mail, postmaster, drivers, chaskeys, etc. These agents of change that carry out the postal dynamics, they were also intermediaries between the social and political space and the local and imperial ones. These agents as mediator of globalization signs the intercede between imperial presence and local action. In Spain, the implementation of this postal reform in Spanish-America provoked reaction among the different political, military, social and economic pliers, affected by the limitation of power and control over the circulation of information that this postal project intends to exercise. In this context, there were constant confrontations between imperial administrations who showed control and local actors who should return autonomy to conduct their affairs throughout the postal system. However, all parties were seeking autonomy and therefore there was cooperation between Crown personnel and local forces. This is the case of the confrontation, for example, between the first postmaster in Cartagena de Indias, Roque de Aguillon and Andrade, an official surgeon of the neighbour due to the transport correspondence somewhat distinct from the peninsula. This is an example between this confrontation between local and imperial force. To sum up, the postal reform was carried out in a global, a comparative context in which, in the 18th century, overseas governments forged many changes in the regulation measure in act to try to control the mail system, communication and institutionalization of the mail. This desire to reform the postal system is a phenomenal link to the process of extractor and building imperial states. Postal reformed items are to face a federal limitation, or they call resistance, problems, fraud, contraband, sites. Their application depends on a complex process of negotiation between different agents and is put with the different ages involved in this circulation of information. Postmaster, Navi, drivers, governance, by royalties in a local and imperial territories. The postal reform in the European empires in the 18th century was endowed with complexity and dynamic network of social actors, which diverged interest and objectives that participate in the postal communication network through multiple strategies and multiple agents. Thank you very much and sorry for the technical inconvenience. Well, quite clearly, postal system is a political construct that is subject to material organizational constraints and that is well explained in your presentation, the colleagues. So now, let's move on to a new temporal era, but still in the South American geographical area with the presentation of Mrs. Perula Godfelder, doctor at the University of São Paulo, and also a laureate. And was given a prize for her research on postal history in Brazil. So thank you for your presentation on the area covering Brazil and relations between your country and postal relations in other countries. So it was a very important time in Brazil's history when the country joined the Postal Union. So the floor is yours now. I'd like to thank first the organizing committee and the UPU International Bureau for this lovely week of research and exchange that have passed here in these days. And today I'm going to present some initial notes of my PhD, my current PhD, that actually have developed since our meeting in Paris in World Economic History Progress. And it is part of a broader agenda of research that seeks to understand the relations between the North and the South, postal relations between the North and the South, and the role of Brazil in this context. But before to do that, I think we need to go back in time and understand and analyze what you call the age of bilateral postal treaties. There is doing since the Napoleon Wars was the mainstream of postal treaties. That is the scope of my presentation today, and a little bit of the entrance of Brazil, the the joint Brazil in the UPU. So, okay. So the first part of my presentation, I will pass quickly because it's about communication with 19th century Brazilian postal communications in numbers. So the tables here I just want to emphasize some tables in order to skip and go into the the main part. In this table, this data was compiled by Erich Klergeman Robert Walsh, very important of this time in Brazil. And it gives us an idea of the coastal locations of how the city of Rio de Janeiro, which is the capital of the empire of Brazil at this time and the main port in South America was connected with coastal locations in Portugal, Africa, and the other river plates. There were part of the slave trade. These connections were communicated with Brazilian ports by British steamers in fact. So, the connection between male and slave trade, it's important to analyze it's part of my research agenda and I will not develop here now, but these maps I've, I've made with a fellow Brazilian historians and geographers, and shows the main mapping and landing points of enslaved people in Africa. It standouts the point of Congo, Angola, Benin and Mozambique. While the other map of Brazil, it's the main landing ports of enslaved people standouts the Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Bahia and Recife with clandestine after 1831 in Santos, Paraná, Guá, and this state with southern port. So, this is important to be, to see how Rio de Janeiro and Brazilian cities were connected in this early 19th century with the world. So, I'll pass here, since my table shows that the next table shows that foreign male, especially newspapers, was the top of Brazilian male at this time, male volume at this time. So, I will pass is the same in 1849. I will pass to the second part of my presentation, which is postal communications between Brazil and the world, main bilateral postal treaty so this is the, the most important part. This is part of my presentation. It is important to keep in mind, in a very simplified way, three main vectors of communication, two of these vectors are inter-homospheric. The first order connects Brazil with Europe and Africa through the present Atlantic postal lines. The second vector between Brazil and USA was established between in the 1840s with California Gold Rush. At this time, Rio de Janeiro was one of the main intermediate ports of the so-called Cape Horn route. Later in 1870s, this vector became official in the calendar of Atlantic Pacific navigations, such as we will see later. Finally, the third vector was a regional nature concerned post communications between Brazil and its neighbors in the southern region, namely Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Regarding the first axis of communication, it's a historiographical consensus that the opening of Brazilian ports to nations friendly to Portugal, the metropolis in 1808, marks the beginning of the decolonization process. In this process, in this contest, that the first bilateral postal treaty was signed between Brazil and Great Britain. It should be noted that the convention for the establishment of portables that dated from 1810 is part of a set of diplomatic actions undertaken by Lord Stringford, a famous diplomat from the British crown in Rio de Janeiro. The treaty established a monthly periodicity for the postline between the ports of Elmouth and Rio de Janeiro. Define guidelines for the closure of postal bags, provide measures for combat trafficking in diamonds, wood, gold, dust, and tobacco, and other questions. With Brazil independence in 1825, the country, mercantile and diplomatic relations with England had to be ratified, a fact that took place in 1827. As a result, the Elmouth-Rio de Janeiro postal line was maintained. The presence of British post agents in Brazil territory dates, in fact, before the signing of this treaty. As we can see in this table, the diplomatic feature of these appointments of all these British post agents is in Rio. Their duties and prerogatives, as well as their relationship with the public, are aspects that I need to analyze further. For now, based on information collected by Jeremy Norrell Thomas Howard, we can estimate that these appointments of all these names continued until 1874, only if, therefore, of the postal convention between Brazil and Great Britain of 1875 was the last convention before Brazil entry in the Yupu. Another bilateral postal treaty that is part of this first axis of communications was between Brazil and France in September 1860. At this time, French shipping companies such as Brothers Le Arnault, Etoche, de Marseille, and L'Union de Chargerdo, the Avery, sought to break British hegemony in South Seas through different passenger transport services and postal mail forwardings. In the free exchange spirit of the time, this treaty provided for the unrestricted circulations of sample and printed material of different natures. Accounting procedures were always established. The second axis of communication was developed between Brazil and the United States in the as I said, May the 1840s and obtained diplomatic recognition through the postal convention of July 29, 1870. This convention is interesting because, however, the monthly frequency between New York and Rio de Janeiro line soon proved to be inadequate to meet the needs of these course merchants who made themselves here in 1871. So one year before before the the the treaty through the words of postmaster general John Russell, he said, I said it, I see him, his quote, the schedule of sale days is the best that can be arranged for a monthly service in a route of that length in Alamos and most only two days at New York between the arrivals and the patrons of the steamers that merchants in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other Atlantic seaboard cities are usually unable to answer the correspondence. The result is that the majority of the letters from United States to Brazil are forwarded by the British mail via some Hampton reaching their destination by their cultural route sooner than if detained most transmission by the next direct streaming from New York to Rio. So this is a problem that American and Brazilians face at this time. And here we can see the Cape Hood among the other routes between New York and California. Rio stands out of one of the sports of the Cape Cape Horn route. The last access of communication in that fight by comprises the bilateral postal treaties established between Brazil and the southern the countries of southern Cone. All these treaties has a common content regular exchange of correspondence by sea, river or land, preposterous in the country of origin, free circulation of diplomatic papers, frank postage of printed materials and prohibition of circulation of metallic species, forecast of drafting regulations in case of Argentina and this is very important on the gold standard currency in the case of Chile and Uruguay. So it's important to remember that all these countries with a section of Peru where in the 1870s emerging from extremely exhausted war context, the Paraguay war, therefore one can estimate that by becoming the first country of India's region to join the UPU, Brazil intended not only to reaffirm its political uniqueness as a Portuguese-speaking monarchy, but also to ensure the military commercial, commercial hegemony achieved in this conflict. Brazil was the victor in this conflict. Sovereignty in relation to countries of the north in the hemisphere and influence in South America's scale are therefore facets of the same movement of Brazilian diplomacy towards UPU. So the last part, I will speak quickly some research questions that I make. The first one, it's conjunctural. So when, where, how and why did Brazil, Adir, join the UPU, the Tree of Burn? In fact, Brazil joined the Tree of Burn, applies to entering the UPU in 1876 amongst the Japan, British colonies and so on. This demand, this Brazilian demand faced objections from the British representatives, because British, as I said, have signed the post-o-treaty, a bilateral post-o-treaty with Brazil two years before. So British were against the entrance of Brazilian UPU. But despite this, Brazil joined the UPU the last, the next year, 1877, as well as Japan and other groups. And to finish, the other question is, what were the consequences of Brazil entering in the UPU? So it's an hypothesis that I need to develop further, but especially with the, after the Convention of Paris that established a set of Quentencies Procedures to Accountability Procedures for the Members. Brazil, the establishment, the maintenance of Brazil in the UPU implied a crescent in-depthness for Brazil, especially in relation to French post office. So Brazil get in-depth staying in the UPU in this time. Brazilian post office get in-depth with French post office, and even with the UPU at this time. This is an hypothesis. This is data that I need to develop further. But this is interesting, because in relation to gold standard system, also the southern countries get in-depthness with northern countries in this time. So the questions that I made as way of conclusion, it's a set of questions and agenda for to share with you as way of conclusion is, what is the relation between the new postal regime instituted by the UPU and contemporary international trade projects, such as the gold standard and the decimal metric system? How does the international division of labor established by capitalism in its post-1870 imperialist phase manifest itself within the scope of the UPU? What is the Brazil place in this arrangement? And third, to finish, how did triangular Europe, Americas, Africa relation develop in the creation of the UPU? With postal relations between Brazil and Africa have followed a trend of diplomatic distancing after the suppression of the international slave trade in 1850. These are questions that I would like to share with you. And thank you. Thank you very much for this very interesting presentation, which lined up with the other points of views. And it shows us an actor that wasn't took covered by one single actor, but we saw the British Empire and the postal flows which went through the United Kingdom for the many reasons that you explained. That seems something very significant, and it reminds us of a time when you would send post between Paris and Berlin, it would go through the United States for a mail. So we have a very good continuity here. And now we've come directly to the role of the UPU and to look at the adjustments and the significance of the various powers throughout the world. And so we're now going to look more directly at the universal postal union and we're going to hear from Mr Diego Avaria, who's going to provide us with information of the multilateral functions of the postal union and its work. Mr Avaria is in works here at the UPU now. And Doctor, I would like to invite you to come up to the podium and give us your presentation. Thank you. Merci Pascal. Thank you Pascal. Good morning everyone. Joining us online. I'm very pleased to be here today at this colloquium celebrating the 150th anniversary of the universal postal union. And at the outset, may I draw your attention to the following image. It depicts the UPU's emblem. It is surrounded by five messengers who pass letters to each others and they symbolize the five continents. This logo is a symbol of multilateralism. Hence the title of my presentation, the universal postal union as a pioneer and template for multilateralism. So you may know that the UPU is one of the first international organizations. It was created by postal experts in 1874 in Bern, Switzerland. And since then it has become an important example and important model for subsequent international organizations. The Eminence scholar, Leonard Wolff stated in 1916 that the UPU by its very birth affected a real revolution. And indeed, the world revolution is very appropriate because prior to the creation of the UPU, the international postal system was in chaos. In fact, there was no such system. For example, a letter from Valleys in Switzerland to St. Paul, Minnesota in the USA could take up to six different routes. And depending on the route, the cost could vary up to 20 times. And this was due to the different fees in the transit countries, different taxes, different ways and measures, and not to speak of the lengthy procedures, the slowness of getting from point A to point B. And sometimes the letter did not even arrive to its final destination. Also often it was the recipient who had to pay for the letter. And this is particularly true until 1840 with the introduction of the first post of the first temp. And here you may see the first page of the Treaty of Bern in 1874. At that time it was called the General Poster Union. And then quickly it changed after four years to Universal Poster Union, truly reflecting the universal spirit of the UPU. Do you remember the emblem in the first page? Yes. It is inspired by this magnificent monument in downtown Byrd. Leonard already mentioned it in his opening speech. It was inaugurated in 1909 for the 25th Jubilee. And it embodies the UPU's truly universal mission. So how did this universal mission come to be? First, it was created by high-level postal officials. Second, the delegates were postal experts. And third, they created an international bureau. Now I will elaborate on each of them. So first point, the creators were high-level postal officials. And there you see them in the photo. All of them were postal postmasters. They signed the Treaty of Bern and they created the UPU. And this was done under the initiative of Heinrich von Stefan, who was already mentioned before. This very room is named after Heinrich von Stefan. He is the pioneer of the UPU. And yes, all were postal postmasters, high-level postal officials. All this started in 1863 under the initiative of Montgomery Blair, the U.S. postmaster, who were convened in Paris in 1863 to agree on 31 matters of principles. And these were then the basis for the meeting in 1874 in Bern, which created the UPU. As I mentioned, 22 countries signed the Treaty of Bern. They all had national post. National post existed. This was not a problem. The problem was getting a letter from one country to another country, from one continent to another continent. And this was achieved through the creation of the UPU, which, by the way, is the second oldest organization after the International Telegraph Union. And indeed, communication has always been essential to humans. So to summarize this point, the UPU was created by high-level postal officials, which means they worked in the post. They were technical experts. And there you see again, you saw that this is the postcard that has been distributed to you. Again, the delegates attended Congress. And they were all postal experts, post officers. So this is my second point. The delegates were postal experts, postal officers, which means that they were not diplomats. Usually, and traditionally, delegates to international organizations meetings have always been diplomats. So here we see something unique with the UPU. The delegates were postal experts. They shared similar problems. Bonds were forged over the years. All this created a positive atmosphere to tackle the difficult issues. Today's delegates are still postal experts. They are not diplomats. And this longevity of the UPU stems from its technical and non-political features. The UPU has always focused exclusively on postal matters, which brings me to my third point, the creation of the International Bureau, IB. Since the very beginning in 1874, it was created already. And there you can see in the photo the current IB building inaugurated in 1970, and in this beautiful city of Bern. It is a lovely building to work in, and most importantly, with great colleagues. This is the secretariat, where the operational work is carried out, where the innovative solutions of the UPU delegates are carried out. The rules set by the delegates are implemented here at the IB. And I know this firsthand as I work here at the IB at the Directorate of Postal Affairs, Postal Operations, more specifically at the Quality of Service Fund Unit. And I would like to thank the hardworking IB team, and especially the organizing committee of this anniversary for organizing this magnificent event. This is the permanent stuff, the permanent stuff at the IB. The IB, which host meetings, the IB host meetings all over the year. These are attended by delegates. They come twice or three times a year, and they come from their national posts. All these delegates are postal officers, postal experts. They come especially for the meetings and then go back to the home countries to resume their postal work. And this, and here we can see a difference, for example, with Geneva. In Geneva, as you may know, is the second headquarters of the UN. It hosts several international organizations, and there the delegates are diplomats. They are not necessarily experts. They are posted in Geneva. They work at the permanent missions. They attend daily meetings at the various international organizations, which means that they have to navigate between many different topics, from telecommunications to disarmament and everything in between. And I know this from when I was posted in Geneva working for the permanent mission of my country. While here in Bern at the UPU, the delegates are postal experts. They share a common interest, postal matters. And all this may facilitate negotiations and the reaching of agreements. By the way, this idea of international bureau and secretariat has been copied by subsequent international organizations. Every international organization has an international bureau or secretariat. If we dig deeper, there are some international organizations that have utilized explicitly the UPU as a template. They have taken policies from the UPU and adapted them to their own needs. For example, the Hague conference on international law and the permanent court of irritation. In their statutes, they mention explicitly the UPU. You may have noticed in the previous slide a sculpture high up in the corner of the ID building. There you can see it closer. It is a Pegasus, a winged horse surrounded by five stars, which represents the five continents. And therefore the universality of the UPU. In this universality, together with my three points, one, high level postal officials, two, postal experts, three, international bureau bring me to my conclusion. The UPU with its unique take on multilateralism has proven its longevity and efficacy in reaching postal solutions. And this has been so from the 19th century to the 21st century. It has been a successful template and continues to be a successful template for other international organizations. And its success and longevity stems from its uniqueness, technical, non-political. And this 105th anniversary should be a boost highlighting the UPU as a pioneer and template. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for that presentation to hear these important points on the context of our colloquium. The specific nature of the universal postal union. You've emphasized that the delegates who contribute to the work are specialists and experts in the area. You didn't mention, not Chrissy, unless I wasn't paying attention, but we are here in a system where matters linked to colonialism, capitalism and expertise are all coming together. And that's a very important part. So your presentation also brought us a bit closer back to Europe, but it showed us how the emergence of the universal postal union had to face war, the war between Austria and Russia, then the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The United States had just emerged from there, civil war and independence. So we're coming in these international institutions so that we're not thinking about the very complex political and cruel times. And this brings us back to the times we're living in now and the role of international institutions in trying to create a world that functions more peaceably. So now we are going to move on to a question and answers session. Our participants were very disciplined. Thank you so much. They even went far further. They took less than the 15 minutes they had each been allotted. So we have time for questions and answers. And before I open that, I would like to say that all the questions that we're going to be looking at are looking at asking questions of people who have worked through archives. These are very complex things. I've looked at tarification archives, looking at the balance and the exchange between countries. So to be able to communicate the presentations that we've heard today, a great deal of bravery is needed to be able to go through this very hard and tiring work. I see we have some questions online as well. Otherwise, please raise your hands and we will give you the floor so you can ask our four panelists any questions you may have. Well, colleague, we have the floor. And if you could introduce yourself, please. I will ask my question in English because all the panelists would be able just to answer it in English. It would be easier. So I'm from the University of Geneva and also visiting professor at NYU New York University. So thank you very much for this very interesting, oh, okay. Maybe it's here. Yeah, that's good. Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. So thank you for this very interesting presentation. I have, since you were pointing to the fact that in fact, the Postal Service and the UPU was more or less connected to the development of capitalism.  It's exactly the time. So it's interesting. I would like to know a little bit more about your experts. Where do they come from? Are they connected more or less to this kind of capitalist developments or, you know, this kind of first globalization in your case, in your case, and also in your case, because you're pointing to the fact that they are experts. But, you know, I mean, there are a lot of things that you can understand with expertise or experts in particular in international organization. What is in fact, you know, the kind of social background of these people and how do they relate to the other presentation on the development of capitalism and all these things. Thank you very much. Yes, you're welcome. I am the Postal Expert. What I mean by that is they are experts in that thing. Everything related to Post because they were working for the Post. And in fact, we could go back to the history of the history of the UPU, if I may say. How this, where did they get the idea of creating the UPU, besides their common interest in Postal Matters? Where was their template? It was the academic and scientific associations that already existed. Scientists that met over the world and they organized congresses. This was the template for the UPU, for Hangar from Stefan and all the pioneers. That's how they started slowly. And this explains why the UPU is as it is. When I mentioned it's not, the delegates are not diplomats. It started like this. It started that they were like we have scientific experts in the field, historians. Here we had Postal Experts. And that's how it started. Thank you for your question. And I think I like this concept of Periscope globalization. We also use this conception in Brazilian historiography. And I think we need to understand this in a theoretical framework. My questions I've developed here were structured by such the so-called word economies, like the writings in word economies like Manuel Valersta and Giovanni Ahrig, a variation green which has a work on the metric system and the standard of the currency. And also on structuralism, Marxism of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean, which is for us is clad in a clock, such as authors as Maria Teresa Tavares, Raul Prébsi, Céus Fortado, historians on this current and also theories of Atlantic south, such as Brazilian historian, famous historian, Luis Felipe Jelen Castro. They all pose this idea of first globalization. And I think first to understand first globalization, we need to understand this different and not equal relations between the south and the north. And as I said, like I couldn't read this part of my face, like a mirror diplomatic post-relations within the scope of the UPU reproduced on a specific scale the cleavage that characterize the different economies within capitalism, reiterating the depth or nature of the countries of the south in relation to the countries of the north. So I think this is an important point of view to understand first globalization. I hope it was, I mean, I think one of the big goals of my talk was to show that the technical expertise that Roland Hill developed was through thinking about conveyance and circulation of people and goods throughout the British Empire. So yeah, I hope that kind of answers your question. I'm not too sure about the history of other British experts in the UPU. So any another bit of information to add? Your sound was cutting out. We can hear you. We're listening. First of all, thank you very much and congratulations for this interesting conference. I have a question for Diego Avaria. Did this postmaster have previous experience working in postal bureaucracy in post office in another country and so in bureaucracy in the governments? And what training did they have? Education, training, formation of this postmaster? And I have a question for Perola. Was there any connection of the Brazilian postal system with Spain or Latin America? Because you speak about the connection Brazilian postal system with British empires, maybe with Spain or Latin America? I don't know. Thank you very much and congratulations. Could you answer? These experts, these postal experts that were the forefathers of the UPU, they were already working at their national posts. National posts existed already prior to the UPU, to the creation of the UPU. From the 16th century onwards, and particularly already in the 19th century, we had national posts. So these were all postmasters, postal officers. They worked in the post. This was their expertise and they started slowly to communicate with each other, sending letters. At that time, letters was the main communication between one country and another country. There was no email. They communicated, they fought bonds over the years and was that weather abundant correspondent. And that's how they agreed on meeting first in 1863 and then 1874. So perhaps one more question. We've been talking a lot about capitalism here. We don't really have time to address this, but we really need to know what type of capitalism we're talking about because at the time, capitalism didn't like businesses that defended the state system, a system that didn't favor competition. So I think we need to also discuss the definition of capitalism and categorize terms. So yeah, so the hand up over there, yes? Over there. And Spain was just after, but I'm not sure about the specific and about the relation between Brazil and the countries of Latin America. And it was made with countries from the Plata region and Indian region, which is Peru, just Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, which is part of the Plata region and settled in the 18th century. Just this country that I drew up in Latin World Treaty, not all countries from the center of the world. No treaty at all. It's working? I don't know. Yeah, this is Eric Scherer from the board of the German Philatelic Association. I think you showed very much Miss Avaria and also others about the need at that time to build the universal postal union because you had kind of a chaos and you had bilateralism before we have seen that between Europe and Southern America, Europe and Brazil. Still, if you look at UPU, what were the blueprints because nobody talked about the German Austrian postal union, for example, and the relation of the German states to Italy, which at that time just have been unified more or less and had been the plain chaos before. And I think the experts you talk about have had their experience in that environment. Would you like to answer? Thank you. Yes, indeed, this German Austrian association already existed. Europe had some treaties and many countries had posted treaties. This was already existing. So this was like what there was already something in place. Yes, there were some blueprints, but it was not enough. And that's why the UPU was eventually created. Thank you for your questions and thank you to the speakers. Thank you for being so good at sticking to the time we've managed to make up for last time. I was surprised by how novel and interesting the presentations were and they were a good start for the next discussion. Thank you very much. We're now going to open the second session and it's a great pleasure and honor to ask my colleague, Sandrine Cott, from the University of Geneva, to come up to the podium and take over for me the great responsibility of leading the discussion. Let me give you the mic, Sandrine. Oh yeah, the mic. Excuse me. I'm always moving around, so it's very difficult for me just to stick to the mic. So the people who are, could you come? Yeah, the three speakers. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, what I want to do about this panel is that I'm very happy to introduce these three speakers. We have people who are academics or practitioners or both in the same time. And I find it always very fruitful to have this kind of combination and this kind of discussion between practitioners and academics. And most of the people, I mean, at least two of the people on the panel are both in the same time. So it's very very fruitful. It will be very fruitful. I don't know, are you giving your talk in French or in English, in French? So our first speaker will be Bruno Cravato-Salvagi. He is going to speak about the European post offices abroad, the UPU between Ottoman Complaints and Power Politics. Bruno Cravato-Salvagi is a historian. He's currently director of the Institute for Postal Studies, the Aldo Secchi Institute, which is an extraordinary institute based in Italy. He is a specialist in postal history, but he's also done a lot of archival work on the history of the Adriatic, the Mediterranean and postal history. So you have 15 minutes and I'm going to have to be very strict with time. I hope you will understand. Good morning. Wait, let's go. So the click for the power point. Where is So at the beginning of the 19th century, a new organization of postal services was put in place with a network of offices, services and methods that were modern, even though there was still no structured international collaboration between the various postal administrations. However, there was still a glaring lack of communication with the Ottoman world, where there were European communities devoted to trade and in need of regular and secure communications with the West and its markets. The turning point for the creation of a postal infrastructure that was capable of linking the economy of such European communities to the Western economy came as the result of a technological development that is steam navigation and also a new political and military situation between 1837 and 1914. Thanks to these conditions and the capitulations regime, which granted to certain European powers, the right to apply personal rather than domestic rather than territorial law in the Ottoman Empire and therefore special rights, France, Austria, Russia, Great Britain, Italy and Germany all opened their own post offices in the main Ottoman cities and they operated under their own metropolitan rules and were open to all. Here's an example. Now, this is the network of European post offices during this period. You can see that there are about 200 offices during this time period. Here's an example of the entry of an Italian post office in Constantinople, the main office in 1908. You will see the portrait of the King of Italy in the background and various visitors, an Ottoman gentleman, a European lady and postcard sellers, people from all walks of life. These offices were an active instrument for the economic expansion of the European communities and above all for their commercial links with the European economies. They were also an important tool for the territorial and financial expansion of European and local banks. Over time, in addition to political and economic reasons, political reasons of international prestige became prevalent and predominant with each European power, endeavoring to extend its political influence and maintain its prestige vis-à-vis both the empire and the other powers as part of the policy of influence and power in the Levant that was well known during this time. What was the attitude of the port towards these offices, these foreign offices? At first, the empire showed little interest in the matter and accepted the opening of these offices and Ottoman postal service, which was fairly unreliable, was not organized until 1841 during the period of reforms, which had begun in 1839. However, over time, the Ottoman service developed and the empire no longer was willing to accept such European presences. The first request for the closure of European offices dates back to 1863, but it was not followed up. France and Russia decided, and I quote, not to concern themselves with the decisions of the Turkish government, end of quote. The official reason given by the powers at that time was the unreliability of the Ottoman postal service. We can delve into the Paris Diplomatic Archives and find this very big file for 10 years of Turkey's Postal Affairs, 1867 to 1877. For instance, I won't read this out, but we can see that the French government would like to organize its postal service and would like to substitute itself for the foreign agencies in Europe, a general Ottoman administration. The powers that have thus far fulfilled this office, as there is none by the government, Ottoman government, will not refuse the sublime port the exercise of this prerogative, sovereign prerogative, but would themselves like to restitute this on the day when the Ottoman government will be able to replace their services. The Ottoman government, and once again I won't read, well perhaps I'll let you read for yourselves. I can't see this all that clearly and you'll see this in the proceedings. Let's see, where am I? The French government hesitated to exceed to this request, feeling that the Ottoman government could not assure the transmission of the mail. So the official reason was the lack of reliability of the Ottoman postal service. There's no need to add that France's promise would only enter into effect if the other powers that also had postal offices in Turkey accepted the same kind of arrangement. So it was all or none. Over time, however, the Ottoman service developed to the extent that the empire joined the U.P.U. at the time of its founding. And with the entry of the empire into the U.P.U., the European offices no longer had any reason to exist and the empire tried on several occasions to have these offices closed. It presented a note to this effect at the first session of the first Congress and not just the first session but the first lines of the meeting report. You can see this here. I'm not going to read it out. We talk about the local government. It's more surprising. There have been abnormalities, etc., etc. This is very important. The response of the session chair was the following. The chairman points out to the delegate of Turkey that the issue he has raised is not within the purview of the Congress, which has no ability to take this up and whose decisions, even if they were taken, would have no effect. He urges the delegate of Turkey to directly contact the delegates of the states which have post offices in his country. In other words, look, I don't care. It's your problem. This resolution provided the legal basis for the European powers to maintain their offices as well as the issue of the trust in the Ottoman system. Indeed, above and beyond the postal and economic motivations, each European power was working to extend its political influence and maintain its prestige within the framework of power politics in the Levant. Our prestige, our influence, these were the key words that were always repeated by the consuls when these themes arose. The empire persisted in its demands for raisins of economy, prestige and political control over incoming information. They were heavily censoring incoming mail at that time from other countries, but the empire's demands were always rejected. The UPU was dragged into the problem by the empire and always refused to take sides, considering that it was more of a political issue than a technical one. Earlier we were talking about technical versus political, or rather they were unable, it was unable or unwilling to go against the interests of the European powers, hence an example of diverging interpretations, of the idea of achieving a single postal territory, and even if that could happen, it's ever incomplete realization. Let's look at just two examples. This is a circular from the IB dated 4th June 1875 shortly after the creation of the UPU. You can read the text, I hope. Turkey has always asked for stamps valid in the empire until the first of January, day to when the imperial government etc etc. The response was to deal directly with the Ottoman Empire. The International Bureau cannot or will not take up the issue. The second example, trying to go backwards. I do apologize. Here we go. So the empire complained to the IB that there was unfair competition by Germany and Austria and on postal rates and asked for arbitration. The IB declared that it did not have the power to do this. But as we see here, this goes beyond the powers of the UN, International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union. There was competition on postal rates and the IB also said no, there can be no competition between countries on postal rates. Yes, that's right. I'm right on track. So the first closure only took place on the 30th of September 1914 by a unilateral act of the empire. There was already a war in Europe and what you have here is the French office closing in Jerusalem on the 30th of September 1914. I had some more examples but I need to stop soon. Here we have a question in the House of Lords in the UK. Lord Sten Lee. Her Majesty's government intend to remove the British Post Office from Constantinople in full from the international post of Treaty of Bern. The answer was not. I don't intend. No, it's not expedient. An internal document from the Ottoman government. As we know, the right to manage the Postal Service in Turkey as in other countries belongs exclusively to the state and foreigners have no right or authority to establish post offices here. The Council of State must act to find remedy to the abolition of these services. By the superior, you can read.  All the political and political Now my time is over and all of the interpretative replies to these questions will have to wait for the proceedings. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much for keeping to time. Sorry, that was very interesting. I was very pleased to see the pictures and the actual mailboxes symbolically. I think this is very nice. I think it would be interesting to see how these symbols went from a form of imperialism to a form of universality between universal but this these material signs of European domination in the public space were something I found very interesting. Now we're not going to leave Turkey. We're staying in Turkey. Amit Sukrik Yaman who will present on the hidden parts of history relations, the funding of the Universal Postal Union and Turkey membership and Mehmet is a unit manager at the Turkish Post Corporation but he has also a PhD and he has researched the history of the Post and the Postal Service in Turkey for a very long time. So he's both a practitioner and a historian and he has 15 minutes to present his talk. Thank you very much. Madam moderator, your excellencies, director general and deputy director general of the Universal Postal Union, colleagues from the International Bureau, distinguished participants, it's a real privilege to appear in this conference of exceptional importance even after 150 years UP's mission remains resolute and unwavering. We still rely on the UP sense of unity, respect of our differences and interests. So I'm delighted to be presenting the key findings of my PhD thesis. Here is the formation of my presentation. I thought it will be more meaningful to start with the source of information than foreign post offices in Turkey. Then the concrete steps towards postal universality to Turkey-UP relations and milestone in the evaluation of postal services which is UP's foundation but I also assessed it from Turkey's perspective and then Turkey's representation in the UP Congresses but before starting my presentation I would like to emphasize that as it can be seen from the presentation of my colleagues, Mr Bruno, non-Turkish academics and postal experts had a saying on Turkey and UP relations for a long time so non-Turkish academics have assessed the Turkey-UP relations. Turkish academics have shown very little interest so far in Turkey-UP relations. My presentation is not going to be a response to Mr Bruno's presentation but I just want to draw your attention to the social and cultural side of postal service with the basis of Turkey-UP relations. One of the starting points of my research was a simple question. What comes to mind when we think of Turkey-UP relations? I have been living with this with different forms of this question over the last 14 years which is my entire professional postal career. As it can be seen from the slide, Turkey's engagement with the Universal Postal Union has not received sufficient attention in scholarly investigations. Scientific works master and PhD dissertation in postal history typically feature only a brief sentence or paragraph acknowledging Turkey's entry into the UP in 1874. This context and the progression of this information often minimal lacks a comprehensive exploration of historical context and the progression of bilateral relations. Even Turkish sources have not analyzed this issue in depth. In this respect, my main aim during my research was to demonstrate that Turkey-UP relations cannot be limited to such short and superficial assessments. My apologies. I'm trying to go back, but can someone help me please? This presentation has been put together from following resources. The research process was challenging yet fulfilling. There were a vast number of a number and diversity of archives to analyze. An essential benefit is the limited availability of the content which primarily reflects one-sided perspective. This presents an opportunity to introduce a fresh viewpoint and offer a novel interpretation which I have intended to provide. Other than this, being a historian and having a comprehensive understanding of postal service was a significant advantage in forming this article. Swiss Post Archive serves a crucial reference source despite its limited documentation on the UP-Turkey relations. It holds unique richness when it comes to history of the UP and UP Congresses. This is the first file of the Berne Congress. I have found very useful but limited documents on UP-Turkey relations that I have already used. I benefited from these documents. I have to say that I found the UP archives somewhat surprising. There might be more other than this to uncover, but these are the works that I have gathered in my research thus far. The limited number of works coupled with their content being distant from UP-Turkey relations indicates a lack of substantial interest from Turkish academia. There seems to be a scarcity of articles and a perceived absence of motivation to delve into research in this specific direction. These are the articles that I have found in Union Postal. As it can be understood from the titles, they are not specifically about UP-Turkey relations. They are mainly about the operational aspects of Turkish Post. I benefited a lot from Congress Minutes, documents from the Congress from 1874 till 1920. During my research, I came across lots of documents, but most of them were about foreign post offices operations in Turkish soils. During my literature review and my review into archive, I didn't come across any research and postgraduate dissertation on UP-Turkey relations. This is what led me to research that subject and this dissertation here is the outcome of this pursuit. I just want to draw your attention to the following image. This is the Turkish soils before its integration into the UPU. This map illustrates the three commercial lines, maritime traffic, postal routes, and the post that Western maritime companies stopped by. This map illustrates foreign post offices on Turkish territory. There were more than 100 foreign postal agencies controlled from the heat offices in Istanbul. French post offices in Turkish soils. The first collect map clearly indicates on what part of Turkish territory each foreign postal offices were located. Not only were the services of Turkish postal administration with its special foreign department at the disposal of public, but also those of France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy, and Great Britain. Taking into account their architectural, social, and human characteristics, it will be incorrect to perceive foreign post as entities without positive aspects. Nevertheless, these functions have undergone significant change over time, adversely affecting Turkey due to closure attempts. Additionally, with the completion of essential structural and operational transformations by the Turkish post, the necessity for foreign posts ceased to exist. This is the first collective step towards postal universality. Paris Postal Conference was the first step. Turkey was not represented at the conference and the available literature doesn't offer clear information on the reasons for Turkey's absence. On the other hand, Turkey is one of the original 22 nations that took part in establishing the Universal Postal Union in other saying, UPU emblazised Turkey's entry into a postal scene. Here are some highlights in UPU-Turkey relations. I would like to draw your attention to the date of foundation of Turkish post, which is a very late date compared to the foundation of other post offices operating in Turkish service. 1874 is the foundation of the Universal Postal Union. Turkey was a founding member. 1875, the formalization of membership. 1876, Turkey launched international postal service and 1897 Turkey was a candidate for the upcoming congress. But here I would like to say a few more things. In 1535, the first concessions were granted to western states persisting until 1740 without any interruptions. Through this time frame, there is no direct mention of postal sector in the relevant agreements. However, starting from 1740, attempts were made to incorporate postal services into these agreements. Following 1840, there was a notable surge in postal activities, with Austria taking the lead in expanding this field. The foundation of Turkish post in 1840 marked its position as the youngest postal administration among the UPU funders. The period from 1840 to 1874 saw the Turkish post focusing on internal reformation. In the 1860s, a decisive strategy was initiated to close foreign postal services. From 1875 to 1923, the struggle to close foreign posts remained unresolved. There is no doubt that the UPU foundation is a breakthrough in the 19th century. Here are the highlights, but I would like to say that countries pioneering innovations such as England, the USA, France, and Germany have historically taken the lead while the Turkey fund and some other countries fund themselves in the role of adopting and implementing these advancements. The western states has consistently been the originator of postal product services, innovations, and developments. The main purpose for Turkey's participation was to use the UPU platform in basically abolishing foreign postal administrations activities. Despite the fact that reforms in Turkish postal service had removed all actual necessity for the maintenance of these foreign post offices in the interest of the mercantile community, they remained as an outbound and visible sign of authority and in persons of charity rights. Countless efforts had been made by the Turkey to secure their abolition, and on more than one occasion, the vast question of the foreign post offices brought Turkey to the brink of war. These efforts were without avail. When the formation of the Universal Postal Union was first mooted, the Turkish government notified the powers concerned of its intention to broach, develop, and sustain before the Congress the question of suppression of the foreign postal agencies in the empire as constituting an anomaly derogatory to its sovereign rights and an anocrinism without any actual case. But the Banh Congress declared itself incompetent to deal with the question. Turkey took part almost in all UPU Congresses. Turkey's involvement in the UPU was not only compelled by necessity and obligation, but also marked a form of objection. It represented a reposal of multinational postal activities and foreign presence within its borders, asserting that postal administration of an independent state should not operate within another independent state's boundaries. This emphasized the existence and functionality of Turkish postal system. Turkey's emphasis on the postal field triggered a multinational and assertive counter-objection. Open, closer examination, it becomes apparent that Western powers refrain from adopting a consulatory stance that will hesitate to relinquish their nominal position in Turkish postal markets since postal operations dissolve their organizations in Turkish cities. To safeguard their influence and maintain their gains, the Turkish post was accused of lacking operational competence in various ways, leading to refusal in terminating its activities. That was the end of my presentation. Thank you for your time and patience. Thank you for keeping the time. It's very interesting to see how even entering an international organization doesn't prevent the other to continue in fact using the territory as a place to assert in a certain way a kind of domination. It raises questions about importance and the way international organizations can really regulate globalization. It's something that we are still struggling with in a certain way, so that's an interesting question. Anyway, so now we are turning our attention to Japan with the presentation of and excuse me for the pronunciation of your name. Riko Honda, is that correct? She will present a contribution on struggles with globalization, the integration of Japan into the UPU in the late 19th century, so following the same pathway in a certain way. Riko Honda is a second-year master of student at the Graduate School of Law in Kyu University, Japan. She is majoring in political science and she is currently at the University of Bern as a Nickton student. You have 15 minutes for your presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you, Professor Sandrine Kot. And good morning, bonjour, and konbanwa to those of you in Japan. It's a great honor for me to have this opportunity to be here with you today. In this presentation, I'd like to talk about the history of Japan-UPU relations in the late 19th century. Through this presentation, through my research, I have discussed some papers discussing the joining process of Japan into the UPU and into influences. These papers seem to rely mostly on the context of the Japanese diplomatic history on the struggle to achieve the three-tail vision of an equal to resist during the major era. However, there are a few papers concerning what Japan has done in the UPU community or what impact it had on and the benefit it gained from the Postal Congresses before and after Japan's entry. Considering this research background and the context of Japan's modernization, this presentation focusing on Japan's involvement with UPU activities from the joining process to Postal Congresses. Partly using the multi-acre approach, I aim to find out why Japan wanted to join and be involved with the UPU, how Japan built relations with the UPU alongside her modernization, and what Japan gained through her activities in the UPU. Before looking at the Japan-UPU history, I'd like to give you some background information reflecting previous research. In the late 19th century, Japan sought the opportunity to foster its postal functions and recover postal sovereignty. In order to achieve this, Japan attempted to conclude bilateral postal exchanges with each western country, respectively, but the negotiation got into a deadlock. As a new solution for this treaty revision, the aim to attend the Postal Congress in Paris impaired Japan to enter the UPU. In this section, I'd like to show you the communication route between the UPU and Japan and the communication within the Japanese diplomatic network itself. At that time, Japan had not yet opened allegations during Switzerland, nor a permanent mission to the UPU. As a result, the focal point on the Japanese side became Aoki Shudo in Berlin, the minister of extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Germany. On April 17, 1876, Aoki sent a telegram to Tokyo about the strong proposal to join the UPU. The German government advised Aoki to ask the Swiss government as soon as possible to mediate Japan's entry into the UPU in time to participate in the upcoming Postal Congress. Japan then decided to join the UPU. After some internal negotiations, this circulation letter was issued and sent to member countries. As far as my research shows, the original version of this letter has yet to be found in the UPU archives or Swiss Federal Archives. However, Aoki sent a copy of the letter to Tokyo, and it still filed in the diplomatic archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. This circulation letter has both translation into the Japanese version and the original copy of the French version. Here is the statement of Japan's entry into the UPU. I found the original in the Swiss Federal Archives, as well as a copy in the diplomatic archives of Japan. This statement was concluded between Arnold Roth, the Swiss envoy in Berlin, and Aoki Schuzel, the minister to Germany. Here is the Japan side. On the Japan side, the statement was attached to a letter sent on March 8, 1877, from Aoki in Berlin, addressed to the foreign minister, Terasima, reporting the provisional signing of the statement. Looking at previous research, there appears to be some key dates when discussing the process of Japan becoming a member of the UPU. One is the date of the signature done on March 3, 1877. The other dates are the date of entry set in the statement and still considered to be the Japan's official day of entry by the UPU, June 1. The date of promulgation, June 9, the date of the UPU convention that first took effect in Japan, June 20. These differences, when considering the actual official dates that Japan entered the UPU, could explained by a time lag in communication between Europe and Japan. To clarify the situation of Japan in the UPU after her joining, I started some monthly journal, Union Postal, from volume number one, issued in 1876 to volume number 19, issued in 1894, stored in the UPU library. I was positively surprised to find that, despite my low expectations, there were a certain number of articles concerning the Japanese Postal Service. One attractive series was annual reports of the Postal Service in Japan. Also, there were some articles introducing Japan's Postal System and its history. All of these articles implied Japan took advantage of this monthly journal to share its current situation and history. As for Japan's involvement in Postal Congresses, I'd like to show you the delegation members and their profiles on the following three slides. The delegation member list and their profiles imply Japan's recognition and understanding of the UPU as an international organization. For the Second Congress, Japan delegated some Shimano of the Ministry of France and two other foreign personnel. Samuel Bryan had been working as an official advisor to the Postal Bureau of Japan since 1873. He played a central role as an expert on Japan's foreign postal service. This member list is evidence that Japan dispatched people who were accustomed to these diplomatic activities in Europe. At the Third Congress, Nomura Yasushi was the delegate as the director general of the Postal Station Bureau and Takahashi was one of the senior officers of the Postal Station Bureau. Tatsuhashi was a trainee in the Japanese delegation to Russia, so he was dispatched from Saint Petersburg. He had previously worked in the delegation to France, so his good command of French was very helpful to Nomura. Compared to his previous delegation members in Paris, their members of the Third Congress can be characterized more as delegates from the Postal Department directly. In addition, Tatsubashi's assignment implies the development of cooperation among Japanese delegations in Europe. At the Fourth Congress, the Japanese delegation members consisted of more specialists. All members came from the Ministry of Communications and the translator was Japanese. Coincidentally, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time was Aoki Shuzo and he supervised all diplomatic activities, including the Postal Congress. As we have looked at Japan's involvement with the UPU, I'd like to emphasize three points as conclusions. First, through the history of Japan-UPU relations, we can see that Japan undertook diplomacy outside of Japan and adapted to a modern diplomatic manner, completing negotiations mainly in German and French, especially in regards to UPU matters. At the time, Japan had not yet sent a legation to Switzerland. In other words, even though Japan did not initially have a direct connection to Switzerland and thereby the UPU, most of the communications with the UPU were done in Berlin, we had some mediation on the German side. I found many documents written by or mentioning Emile Welty, the representative of the Postal Department of Switzerland, Arnold North, the Swiss envoy in Berlin, as well as Heinrich von Steffen. This implies the main languages used was not English, but German and French. Furthermore, most of the documents addressed to Aoki in foreign languages were sent to Tokyo with Japanese translations. This means information collected in Tokyo was addressed in Japanese and Japan was eager to broaden translation skills and personnel. The second conclusion is that, according to a certain number of articles in the journal Union Postal, it could be said Japan took advantage of the nature of this journal to demonstrate the current situation and qualities of her postal service to other countries. The journal could have been a channel to reveal the mysterious country of Japan that suddenly opened up to the world in the late 19th century. The third and final conclusion that through building relations with the UPU, Japan developed a multilateral diplomacy and educated through being a part of an international organization and participating in international conferences. As time passed, Japan delegated more specialists to the congresses. For the Japanese at that time, international organizations and international conferences were completely new concepts. Therefore, the example of Japan-UPU relations shows how Japan accepted and behaved as a member of an international organization. Through this research, I was able to find the communication line, working languages, and the people who committed to building and implementing these relations with the UPU. This presentation brought light to the initial stage of Japan-UPU relations. With this in mind, one could pose some possible further research questions. For example, why did no country object to Japan's entry, even though countries, especially like the UK and France, strongly distracted Japan's postal system? The UK and France vehemently refused to conclude the bilateral postal authorities, and this was one reason why Japan pressed her hope to improve the postal sovereignty on the UPU mechanism. Therefore, it could be interesting to research why they eventually agreed to Japan joining the UPU on the assumption that they would have to cross their foreign post offices in Japan. Further research could refer to various archives, including that of the UPU, Japan, and other countries, to investigate what kind of negotiation happened. Another question is, what extent the UPU actually influenced Japan's implementation and development of both its foreign postal service and domestic postal service? Research might be able to compare the agenda of the congresses and the resulting implementations in Japan. Finally, from the perspectives of the Japanese diplomatic history, it could emerge a question of how Japanese diplomats recognized and accepted the concept of Japan international organizations, rather the concept of multilateral diplomacy. In this way, my ongoing research aims to clarify the development process of Japan's multilateral diplomacy, so the example of the UPU in the late 19th century, just after the major restoration and the paradigm shift from the Tokugawa Shogunate, a similar era to a modern society. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you and again really thank you for keeping the time. We are in a very disciplined, disciplined crowd here. Maybe I turn back to French, since it's my real language. Well, it was very interesting to listen to this at various communications and at all three shows, to what extent a technical agency such as the UPU has also a political function. And there is of course the recognition of state sovereignty, which is always at stake. And of course delegates are sent to by the various sovereign states to the congresses that took place over time. And it is interesting to see how joining an international organization is a way to obtain recognition, including political recognition internationally. So all of this is very linked. And of course, there are a number of difficulties that have to be overcome along the way. But all of this is really very interesting. The role of international organizations in this respect to be they technical or not. And I have worked a lot on the ILO file and we reach the same conclusions in that regard. I don't want to monopolize the floor. Just feel free to ask a question. French post. I had two questions. One for Bruno and the other for Ms. Ronda. Bruno, you showed us several pictures a little earlier. There was one of a French letterbox postal box. And I can tell you that we had the same letterboxes in the French countryside in those days. So I'm very interested to know why the same was found in Turkey. And another question of for Ms. Ronda. And if I'm mistaken, I don't really know Japan's history very well. In spite of the fact that I'm specialized in the 19th century, you didn't actually mention the Meiji era and the impact of that era on the way in which Japan structured its postal sector. Is there a link or not? Thank you. Well, thank you. As you know, there is a tradition from the administrative point of view, which is highly centralized. The French post offices abroad were managed by employees who arrived from metropolitan France. So all of this was organized by postal employees of metropolitan France. They paid the same sorry as those working in France and the same rules apply to their activities. But in small countries, ephemeral countries will instead of having employees of the postal sector, you have local staff such as consuls who fulfill their tasks. And the same goes for Italy as regards Austria and Hungary that had many post offices in the Middle East. There was a tradition of decentralizing the administration. The employees were no longer employees from Vienna, but local employees locally recruited and employees of navigation, no maritime agencies in particular, but not sent by Vienna. Okay. Thank you for your questions. Does your question mean that what is the impact of the Meiji restoration towards the Japanese postal system? Okay. Thank you. And basically Meiji restoration is a very big historical event for Japanese histories, because before the Meiji era, we had a total samurai era. So we didn't contact with most of the Western countries. That's because after the Meiji restoration, or just before the Meiji restoration, we first conquered the modern diplomatic treaties with some Western countries. And that leads Japan to accelerate the modernization or to catch up with the technical advancement, technical innovation from the European countries. That's because too big impact we had. One is to modernize the postal system itself, though we had some domestic postal system across Japan. And the second point is to have an international postal service. It is also a big reason why Japan has to run and catch up with UPU mechanisms. Thank you. Does it answer? Okay. Thank you very much. I have a question for my colleague from the Turkish post here, if I may. You know only one PhD thesis about this matter, but do you know some other PhD or master thesis about foreign post office in the Ottoman Empire? Because I know at most one. I don't remember if it's a PhD thesis or a master thesis about foreign post office in the Ottoman Empire. Yes, you're right. There is one master thesis, but it is about Ottoman Postal Administration's history. UPU-Turkey relations are not directly covered, but I have truly analyzed this master thesis and the only thing that was underlined in that thesis was that Turkey saw the necessity to be a member country of the universal postal union because that was the only way to abolish foreign postal presence on its soil. Other than this, there are some articles and also PhD thesis, dissertations on focusing on Ottoman Turkish postal history. But when it comes to UPU-Turkey relations, we have some short paragraphs and they are more or less the same. So we don't see any different assessment or approach or perspective. So yeah, there is only one PhD thesis. In 2024, two book chapters were published. These were also about UPU-Turkey relations. Turkey's membership in the UPU's impact on the operational competence of Turkish Postal Service. And other than this, unfortunately, there are no scientific works. So I can say that. Yes. I've seen another question here. Maybe we can take two more questions and then we have the lunch. Is that right? Okay, so. You're Richard John from Columbia. Question for Dr. Honda. Your paper, like the work of Douglas Howland on Japan and international organizations, stresses as an alternative to the technical expert-based argument presented in the last session, at least as I understand it. The Japanese approach, bilateral focusing on diplomacy with Germany, challenges that received narrative in which the Swiss, who according to Gabriel Baldi, were quite important in mediating the French and German conflict. The Japanese developed an alternative way to develop international communication links. I wondered if you could comment on the relationship between your work and Howland's and on its challenge to Eurocentric conceptions of international communications in the second half of the 19th century. Okay. Thank you for your questions. Does your question, a direct answer for two points first is the connection between the Howland papers, as well as what is the challenge or how the recognition of Japanese history for the Eurocentric communication route or lines? Is that exactly for your questions? Okay. Thank you. First thing is that, yes, I have already read the Howland papers and I found his research is excellent and it's very influenced by my presentation today, especially for the first one part for the joining process part. And so that's because his paper is apparently very unique and almost only one paper discussing the joining process of Japan into the UPU in English. That's because I have to more and more analyze his papers and to find out the differences of our Japanese history narratives and the western context of the histories. And the other part is how to challenge the Eurocentralism. I think we had to think about the Eurocentralism itself, but at that time Japanese recognition toward Europe is maybe beyond the Eurocentrism because we Japanese at that time Japanese really knows about they have to run new technologies or new society models like such ones, very differences between the Tokugawa Shogunate era and the western countries. That's because I'm not sure whether we can discuss about the differences between Japanese history and the western histories on the context of the European Centralism. But, yeah, of course it's very interesting point how Japanese initially recognized as like a Eurocentralism or didn't be conscious about that concept itself. It's a further research question. It could be a further research question. Very thank you. One last question. Yes. And then we have lunch. Okay. Thank you for the very informative discourse. My name is Titi Kisato from Japan, so Kanazawa University. So I'd like to focus upon the question for Bruno, if I may. So your discourse is very informative, rather than three dimensions between the political dimension and political domain, which is overwhelming. The political element has been always overwhelming. The element of technical is very hard to keep in objective rather than subjective. So what do you think about the commercial link between the two overarching between two of them? So what do you place a commercial link between political and technical elements? So what do you put in place is the importance of commercial links in the world between the political elements and technical elements? I'm sorry, but I think I'll just say it. Were you saying commercial, commercial? Yes. So my question is, should we understand about the commercial link is the internal linkage about the political elements and technical elements? So what do you implement in terms of what the commercial link is? Your question is political and technical matters. Yes. So technical matters is very simple. The foreign post office rules as the metropolitan, the inland post offices. So French post offices is ruled as the post offices in France. No problem. Political matters are quite different because always again and again post European Ottoman government asked for the closure of this post office because it was obviously a lack of sovereignty, but always refuses not for technical reasons, in fact, but only for political reasons for poisons, for the engagement of the power of political influence in the Levant. The political influence in the Ottoman Empire was a reason better important than the technical reasons. The technical reasons have no importance because at the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman post service rules well, no problem, no problem. The only problem was that the Ottoman post service from the Europe to Constantinople to Istanbul, the other countries, censorship on the letters, open and a lack of privacy. This is real. No. So no problem for political reasons, especially after the Armenian troubles in 1895 with the first Armenian troubles. The political control and political censorship was of the Ottoman Empire was very strong. After the Young Turks Revolution also was a change of political matters because the government of the Ottoman Empire before the Revolution of Young Turks was very absolutist, isn't it? No? Yes. So the political reasons is really more important than the technical matter. The technical matter is at the bottom level. Thank you. I don't want to take much of your time, but it's already in my article, but I would like to emphasize the fact that politics has always been involved in postal service, starting with 1874 till today. It's a matter of fact. So I saw one picture from the presentation of my colleagues, Mr. Avario. The high-level postal officials were invited to burn, to discuss, to unify the postal standards. So we also, that picture, high-level postal experts, most of them were here for the same reason, but some of them came here for different purposes. And I am interested in the social side of postal services. And I see nothing wrong for Turkey to bring foreign postal service problematic here to the U.P.U., because Turkey considered the U.P.U. the only solution for the platform. So maybe you have already seen it. Turkey made a declaration during the opening of the Congress. It was a long declaration full of social facts. It was not only for Turkey. It was for the whole countries that were having the same problematic. So Turkish delegate didn't speak for Turkey itself. He spoke for the whole world, if I may say so. So was it really political? Was that really political? If so, can you please answer that question? In 1876, member states came together here in Bern again to discuss, to manage, actually, the integration of colonial territories into the U.P.U. The Turkish delegate was also there. If Turkish declaration was political, well, that was also political. So I think we need to, we have the same problems today. I think the starting point of our negotiations is important. I believe that it's not because I'm from Turkey, but I have seen many times that declaration. I have seen the Congress documents, all of them. We need to be honest. We need to be a bit fair. So to me, it was not political. Turkey had right to take control of the domestic and international postal system happening within, inside its border. So that was my final words. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you. Okay, on that, I think we can close the session. Thank you very much for everybody. And now we have lunch. Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much. Just a couple of announcements first. So the lunch will happen on the 7th floor for those who don't know the building. So you can access to the elevators on right hand side when you cross the exhibit, the philatelic exhibition, and then take the elevators. Second thing, you're welcome to have your picture taken and postcard with your picture produced. We have a special booth just in front of the big windows here on that front. It's a special service offered by Swiss Post. It's very fun. And I encourage you to do that. We're going to resume at quarter to two. So we have an hour and 10 minutes for lunch. Thank you very much.