The origins of this work go back to Italia ‘98, an international philatelic exhibition in Milan, where a well-known French dealer happened to have a box of old letters on his desk. Two of these letters appeared to be especially interesting. They were business correspondence, sent from New York to August Martell in Cognac, France, in the late 1820s, by the ships France and Charlemagne.
At that time, all overseas mail was carried across the oceans by sailing ships. A further examination of these two letters opened up a new world to me. The France and the Charlemagne were American sailing packets on regular line service between New York and Havre. As will be noticed in this study, the idea of ‘sailing on schedule’ instead of general merchant shipping was one of the most important conditions for the development of business information transmission, whether conducted by sail or by steam.
A few years later, when I started this study, Professor Yrjö Kaukiainen’s article on the Shrinking World gave my thesis a firm direction at the point when the idea was still more or less open. Without that article, my work on this theme would probably never have been started. I would like to thank Professor Kaukiainen for his patient guidance, which continued even after his retirement from his university post.
I would also like to thank Professors Riitta Hjerppe and Markku Kuisma for their support and many useful conversations in their research seminars, and Professor Päiviö Tommila for his earlier counsel on the history of communications. I am also indebted to Professor Laura Kolbe, who took the time to read my thesis in an early stage, thank you for your support.
My warmest thanks also go to Professor Robert Lee, School of History at the University of Liverpool, and Dr Adrian Jarvis, Centre for Port and Maritime History, for facilitating and supporting my studies in Liverpool.
The pre-examiners of my thesis, Professor Jari Ojala and Docent Mika Kallioinen gave many insightful comments on the work. Especially the detailed observations and recommendations by Jari Ojala were extremely valuable in the final phase of the study. The international group of researchers led by him and Leos Müller also shared ideas of good value during the congresses under the title ‘Information Flows 1600-2000’ in Jyväskylä (2005) and in Helsinki (2006), and many e-mails and articles have been sent across the oceans between the participants later on. Thank you for your contribution, all of you.
Graeme J. Milne, Sari Mäenpää and Tage Lindfors, thank you very much to you, too, for reading my texts and giving your useful comments, and thanks for all our good conversations. And without Tim Voelcker’s help in London, some of my East India records would never have been finalized – thanks a lot.
I would also like to add my grateful thanks to my opponent at the defence of my doctor’s dissertation in Helsinki in December 2006, Professor John J. McCusker from Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA, who still keeps ‘nudging’ me to continue studies on this topic.
Thank you, Heikki Hongisto, Johan Snellman and Seppo Talvio for kindly providing me with copies of relevant correspondence from your philatelic collections. And thanks for the whole philatelic society – collectors, dealers, writers, and colleagues in different countries – for all the discussions, articles and useful tips over the years. It has really been fun.
After publishing the web version of my thesis, I have had the pleasure of receiving encouraging comments as well as updates and unpublished information on their own studies from the well-known maritime postal historians Colin Tabeart and Richard Winter. Thank you very much for your kind help and observations.
Many thanks to Derek Stewart and his team for the final language checking of my work and to Professor Lewis R. Fischer and Maggie Hennessey, Managing Editor of the IJMH, for their useful advice concerning academic writing.
Research work could hardly be successful without the help of skilled personnel in the libraries and archives. I would like to direct my grateful thanks to the directors and personnel of the Merseyside Maritime Museum Library & Archives; the University of Liverpool’s Sydney Jones Library & Archives; the Liverpool Public Record Office Library & Archives; the India Record Office and the Philatelic Collections of the British Library in London; the Library of the Royal Philatelic Society London; and the Library of the Post Museum in Helsinki.
For financial support, I wish to express my warm thanks to the Helsingin Sanomat Centennial Foundation, which enabled my studies in the Liverpool archives, and to the University of Helsinki.
Finally, of course, my greatest gratitude goes to my family and to all my friends, whether mentioned above or not. Without you my thesis would probably have been completed much earlier, but I would definitely have lost something else of personal importance in my life. Thank you all.
I dedicate this book to my parents: to my late father, who always encouraged me to study further, and to my mother, whose warm support helped me through many difficulties during the years when I was involved in this research.
Helsinki, June 2007
Seija-Riitta Laakso