The Prosperity Of The Post Office And The National Identity Of The Britain

In the 19th Century, as a public service institution that have the most strongly link to public life, the British Post was closely related to people’s daily lives, which was an indispensable infrastructure that promoted people’s communication with each other and the social development. In 1840, Hill’s Uniform Penny Post Reform linked the entire empire together through the postal network that constituted by letters, newspapers and magazines, postcards and other services, expanding the scope of information communication into thousands of households. What effects that the changes imposed on the whole empire society? How is it penetrate into people’s daily life and how to quietly gradually change people’s life, from the basic necessities to the idea. This thesis is from the perspective of the daily life history of the common people, taking a bottom-up way of showing how the British Post Office infiltrate the daily life and values of the British into the colonies through postal service such as letters, newspapers and periodicals. In such an enormous empire, how to make the public, especially the colonists, form the national identity of the English nation and the whole British empire spontaneously and unconsciously. Due to the outbreak of the First World War, the year of 1914 is the watershed of postal development, which produced negative effects on the development of the Post Office, such as the number of mails is decreased, the glorious era of uniform Penny Post is over. Therefore, this thesis does not involve the postal development of the war and the following time.The first chapter discusses the three stages of the development of the British Post Office. First of all, it describes the general situation of the development of the postal service before Roland Hill’s reform in 1840 and the main purpose is to improve fiscal revenue depended upon the high postal fees in this period, which lead to the general public is excluded from this service, especially in Scotland and Ireland. So the flow of information is still relatively closed, backward and imbalance in some areas of the Britain, especially in the remote rural area. Secondly, it discusses the performance from 1840 to 1868 that the Post Office come into the stage of rapid development. The Post Office become the real not the nominal public institutions after Rowland Hill’s penny postal reform in 1840.The reform unified the mail charges in the nationwide that only one pence as long as the weight of letter is no more than one ounce and the mail fees are no longer depended on the delivery distance. In addition, fees must payment in the form of stamp in advance. This measure resulted in a sharp increase in the number of letters, which has been widely endorsed and supported by all levels of society in Britain. Sending letters through the Post Office is no longer the privilege of the upper class, ordinary people can also enjoy the benefits of postal business, especially the poor. Finally, it describes the further development and improvement of the postal service in 1868-1914,which the postal service further diversified and opened with more efficient revolutionary communication means-Telegraph and telephone.1868 Parliament Bill announced that the telegraph service is officially reverted to the Post Office and almost all private telegraph companies have been incorporated into the post’s postal service. Since then, postal business services continuous improvement and continuously rich:postal remittance, postal savings, postal parcels, newspapers and magazines, insurance and pension service, Telegraph and telephone service and so on, which greatly changed and facilitated people’s life. In 1912, the Post Office officially nationalized the telephone company, at this point the basic form of the complete postal business services chain is came into being.The second chapter mainly discusses the influence of the Post Office to the British society. It divided into two parts. The first part demonstrates what influences that the Post Office produced on the scattered, fragmented basic necessities of people’s life through letters and newspapers. Perfect route network and new type of transport such as train and steamship made the goods all over the country can be quickly transported to the destination, which promote the emergence of international market. Under the influence of the British people day after day, local people also began to accept the food that use of English cooking style,imitate the dress of the English gentleman and lady, construct English public buildings and garden house. The second part specifically describes the postal savings bank that is an important branch of the postal service, which the impact on people’s economic life can not be underestimated. In addition, it linked to the postal remittance business that using the original postal service network. As long as there is a post office where it can establish the contact with the postal savings bank and in addition to the metropolis, the post office is located in more remote towns and villages. It makes the lower working people can enjoy the various services and facilities offered by the bank as well as the elite class. In short, the Post Office has greatly enriched people’s material life, and laid the foundation for the expansion of spiritual communication space.The third chapter mainly demonstrates the influence of the Post Office from the change of geographical space and spiritual space. In the peak development of the Post Office, the communication range of the mass has been extended unprecedentedly, which changed their perception of the British and the cognition of the colony. The richness of material life expands the geographical space and spiritual space of their social life and the postal service network connected the entire British Empire into a whole, that spread British political, economic, legal, religious, moral and other spiritual culture to every corner of the colony and promoted the popularization of British education and English culture. With the rapid development of news publishing,people read newspapers and periodicals, speak freely and express opinions on current events in cafes, pubs and other public places. In the process of discussing and criticizing the national political affairs, a kind of universal public opinion is formed, which achieved a kind of political identification. The richness of people’s ideological consciousness has been subjected to be impacted unprecedentedly, and the sense of space expands and extends continuously. In other words, on the basis of the former two chapters, it argues that what impacts the invisible thought, concept and value have been produced on the basis of the visible communication process of the rich material activities.