Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
(Dohrn-Van Rossum 1996). Delivery times from Brussels to Paris were 3 days
in the summer (4 in the winter); to Granada, 15 summer days or 18 winter
ones; and to Rome, 10 summer days or 12 winter ones. The
fiscal crisis of the
Spanish monarchy, however, eventually brought this system to an end around
1570. In England, prior to 1784, mail was carried by mounted post riders,
who were eventually displaced by mail coaches. In 1784, a uni
fi
ed network of
public coaches was introduced, the mail-coach system. Coach services began
between Bath and London, and before long the country was serviced by
numerous mail coaches running on strict timetables. Their speeds averaged
about 10 miles (16 km) per hour, and were safe and reliable: Jane Austen
could write of young ladies traveling safely by coach unaccompanied. The
system popularized the idea of public passenger transportation with well-
de
fi
ned prices and departure and arrival times. As Cardwell (1995:229) puts
it, “Although the mail coach is now an object of vicarious nostalgia, a subject
for greeting cards, in its day it represented—and was widely accepted as—a
thoroughly modern technical advance and a clear proof of social progress.”
Britain pioneered the use of the postage stamp with the Rowland-Hill
reform of 1840, named after the inventor of that innovation. Immediately
thereafter, the volume of mail in Britain leapt from 76 million to 169 million
pieces annually. By 1874, the U.S. followed suit. Various other national postal
systems soon arose, along with postal laws and regulations, prescribed speeds
for riders, and a mounting desire for punctuality. As national systems became
standardized, the need to expedite international mail rose accordingly; thus,
the universal Postal Union was created in 1875 in Bern under the Universal
Postal Convention of 1874. The newly founded systems were remarkably
e
fi
cient: in 1875, a letter from England could reach Moscow in four days, a
rate that essentially remained unchanged for more than a century.
The British network necessitated the adoption of a uniform time system
across the country, which, naturally, would be that of London, over the objec-
tions of countryfolk. In towns and villages, the posthorn sounded the arrival
of the mail coach and became a symbol of punctuality. The system also helped
to facilitate the di
usion of news throughout the country, a process assisted
by the abolition of the stamp tax on newspapers. The late eighteenth-century
“turnpike boom” in Britain and France was thus not simply a technological
change, but an important part of the consolidation of national power and
identity. These changes also contributed to the emerging Victorian work ethic
and expanding commodi
ff
ed labor markets, in which “free time” was held to
be the reward for hard work. Soon foreigners observed the English mania for
saving time.
In addition to the rationalization of space, early modernity also saw the
homogenization of calendar time. Julius Caesar's adoption of the Egyptian
calendar in 45
fi
produced a year that was 11 minutes longer than the true
solar cycle; the Julian calendar was established in the belief that the year is
precisely 365¼ days long, when it fact it is 365.24219 days. For this reason,
the Julian calendar gradually fell out of synch with the solar year. By the
bc
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