The Qing Empire's Last Flowering: The expansion of China's Post Office at the turn of the twentieth century

Abstract

The Great Qing Imperial Post Office was set up in 1896, soon after the First Sino-Japanese War. It provided the first national postal service for the general public in the whole of Chinese history, and was a symbol of China's increasing engagement with the rest of the globe. Much of the preparation for the launch was carried out by the high-ranking foreign staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, an influential institution established after the first Opium War.With a mission to promote modernization and project Qing power, the Imperial Post Office was established with a centrally controlled set of unified methods and procedures, and its success was rooted in integration with the new railway network, a strategy at the heart of its ambitious plans for expansion. This article explores the history of this postal expansion through railways, the use of which allowed its creators to plan networks in an integrated way-from urban centres on the coasts and great rivers through to China's interior.

Projecting the Road: Topological Photography on the Yunnan-Burma Frontier

“…From 1901, the Postal Secretary was a Frenchman, Théophile Piry, who focused his energy on expanding the postal service alongside the railway network. 58 Thus a similar topological imperative to that which generated the Pichons' artless map, driven by networks and connections, also guided the stunning cartography of the Imperial Post Office. In 1903 the Imperial Post Office created a schematic, topological map of China's postal network.…”