The Universal Postal Union has governed international mail since 1874

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The Universal Postal Union has governed international mail since 1874

By Clark B. Timmins

UPU new official stamp

   What does political unrest in the Ivory Coast have to do with the Monaco 0.50-euro 23 rd Universal Postal Union Congress Bucharest Romania stamp (Scott 2342), shown in Figure 1?
   The 23 rd congress of the UPU was originally planned for 2004 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, but it was moved to Bucharest, Romania.
   Dozens of planned stamp issues from around the world were altered to refl ect this fact. Others, such as the Ivory Coast 180-franc+20 fr semipostal stamp (Scott B24) shown in Figure 2,
commemorate the congress that didn’t happen.
   The UPU is a representative body comprising 190 member countries. It regulates international postal materials and practices.
   The UPU’s objective is to ensure that no physical or political barrier obstructs the reciprocal exchange of the international mails.
   Before the founding of the UPU in 1874, each country’s postal administration had its own system of weights, rates, and practices. In fact, numerous disparate postal systems sometimes existed within a single country.
   A few national postal administrations had bilateral agreements with other administrations that allowed cross-boundary distribution of the mails.
   Delivery of international mail then was haphazard at best, and often impossible.
   Today, thanks to the services of the UPU, it is relatively easy to send mail to almost any location in the world, using only stamps
of the country of origin.
   Representatives of 22 countries met Sept. 15, 1874, in Bern, Switzerland. Countries represented at the meeting were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.
   The representatives drafted the 1874 Treaty of Bern, which resulted in the formation of the General Postal Union. The treaty came into force July 1, 1875, for most countries. For France, it was Jan. 1, 1876.
   In 1878, the General Postal Union was renamed the Universal Postal Union in recognition of the numerous changes in membership that had taken place since the treaty became effective.
   On July 1, 1948, the UPU officially became one of the United Nations’ international organizations.
   Any country can apply for membership in the UPU. Admission of a non-U.N. member requires approval by at least twothirds of UPU members.
   The 1874 Bern congress reduced and simplifi ed rates.
   The basic letter rate was set at 25 French gold centimes per 15 grams weight, with local variations from 20c to 32c permitted.
   The 1874 congress also established that postage stamps should be used to prepay mail sent between countries. Unpaid mail was charged twice the regular rate. Prepayment of postage was a relatively new concept. This ruling resulted in prepayment of postage on virtually all international mail.
   The UPU provided for the forwarding of letters between member countries without payment of additional postage. For this reason, international covers after this date are seldom found with mixed franking of postage stamps from two or more countries.
   Uniform colors for stamps to be used on international mail were agreed on at the fifth UPU congress, held in 1897 in Washington, D.C. Uniform colors allowed easy recognition in the destination countries of fully paid international mail.
   The colors selected were dark blue for the international letter rate, red for the international postcard rate and green for international printed matter.
   The stamp color policy was eliminated at the 13 th UPU congress, held in Brussels, Belgium, in 1953, by which time it had been widely disregarded.
   The 1897 congress discussed a universal postage stamp that would be valid for postage in all member countries and would allow prepayment of return postage for correspondents in foreign countries.
   The fluctuation of currency values in different countries kept the idea from being adopted.
   The 1906 UPU congress in Rome, Italy, created the postal reply coupon, later renamed the international reply coupon, by which the sender can furnish return postage to someone in another country. The effective date of the IRC was Oct. 1, 1907.
   The 1906 congress also gave the free franking privilege to prisoners of war, and it made provision for picture postcards to be handled the same as ordinary postal cards.
   The 1897 congress in Washington, D.C., passed the requirement that stamps intended for international mail must bear a face value or denomination. At the 1906 congress, it was further decided that the denominations should be in Arabic numerals.
   The proscription against using nondenominated stamps on international mail was dropped in the late 1990s. Effective Aug. 13, 1998, the U.S. Postal Service revised its International Mail Manual and Domestic Mail Manual to allow nondenominated stamps, "except for precanceled stamps with rate markings," to be used for international mail.
   The 1924 congress in Stockholm, Sweden, established the requirement that postage stamps must bear the name of the country of origin in Roman letters.
   Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have ignored this provision. Great Britain is exempt from this provision. The effi gy of the sovereign denotes British stamps.
   In the past, member countries were required to send specimen examples of all stamps for distribution to member nations. An overprinted Hawaiian 50¢ King William Lunalio specimen stamp is shown in Figure 3.
   The UPU is a partner in the World Numbering System, and it maintains a web site at
www.wnsstamps.ch/en/ where all stamps submitted by member nations can be viewed online.
   The UPU also maintains a registry of illegal stamp issues about which member nations have complained.
   Clark B. Timmins lives in Utah and works as a software engineer. His grandmother and parents are stamp collectors, and they inspired him to collect from an early age. His main collecting interest is UPU commemorative issues.

Figure 1. A Monaco 0.50-euro 23 rd Universal Postal Union Congress Bucharest Romania stamp (Scott 2342).

Figure 2. This Ivory Coast 180-franc+20 fr semipostal stamp (Scott B24) commemorates a UPU congress that did not happen as planned.

Figure 3. An overprinted Hawiian 50¢ King William Lunalio specimen stamp.