Representatives of more than twenty countries met in Bern and established the Universal Postal Union, agreeing to standardized international postage rates and procedures for exchanging mail across borders. Before this agreement, international mail often required separate bilateral postal treaties between each pair of countries, complicating correspondence tied to trade, such as orders, invoices, and payments. The Union simplified cross-border mail into a single coordinated system that relied heavily on the growing networks of steamships and railways to move letters and parcels. It became one of the earliest permanent international organizations coordinating a global infrastructure.
Relevance to Trade History
Standardized the cross-border movement of commercial mail and documents, supporting the administrative side of expanding international trade.
Read the full story in our article Steamships and the Transformation of Maritime Commerce.
Source: Universal Postal Union (UPU) historical archives. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.