Day 1 – Thursday, 1 February 2024
9.00–9.30 Opening ceremony
Masahiko Metoki, Director General of the UPU International Bureau
Philippe Wahl, Chairman and CEO of La Poste Group
Scientific introduction: Laborie, Léonard (CNRS, UMR Sirice, France)
9.30–11.00 Pre-1874: global traffic and postal reforms
Chair: Griset, Pascal (Sorbonne Université, UMR Sirice, France)
Presenters:
- Moreno-Cabanillas, Rocío (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain)
Governance and power in the transatlantic postal system: the organization of the postal service in the Spanish Empire in the 18th century - Muller, Charli (New York University, United States of America)
The capitalist and colonial logics of Rowland Hill’s postal reforms: terra nullius, uniform pricing, and “conveyance at the lowest rate - Goldfeder, Pérola (Ouro Preto Federal University and Minas Gerais State University, Brazil)
The throne and the world: from bilateral postal treaties to Brazil’s entry into the Universal Postal Union (1840–1877) - Avaria, Diego (Universal Postal Union, Switzerland)
The Universal Postal Union: a pioneer and template for multilateralism
11.15–12.15 The foundation of the UPU as a global organization. Strengthening or fighting back (informal) imperialism in the 19th century?
Chair: Kott, Sandrine (Université de Genève, Switzerland)
Presenters:
- Crevato-Selvaggi, Bruno (Istituto di studi storici postali “Aldo Cecchi”, Prato, Italy)
European post offices abroad: the UPU between Ottoman complaints and power politics - Yaman, Mehmet Şükrü (Turkish Post Corporation, Türkiye)
The hidden parts of historic relations: the founding of the Universal Postal Union and Türkiye’s membership - Honda, Ririko (Keio University, Japan)
Struggles with globalisation: the integration of Japan into the UPU in the late 19th century
13.45–14.30 The foundation of the UPU as a global organization. Strengthening or fighting back (infor-mal) imperialism in the 19th century?
Chair: Giuntini, Andrea (Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy)
Presenters:
- Harris, Lane (Furman University, United States of America)
“The comity of nations”: the Chinese Post Office, the Universal Postal Union, and the abolition of “alien post offices”, 1843–1923 - Avrillas, Camille (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
Between a desire for cooperation and imperial rivalry: the German, Indo-British and French post offices in Zanzibar (1875–1904)
14.30–15.30 Parallel workshops
The UPU’s past: what comes next? Sources and methodologies
Chair: Le Roux, Muriel (IHMC/CNRS/ENS, France)
Presenters:
- Batzeli, Anna, and Davis, Luke (Archives Portal Europe)
The traces left behind: an appraisal of the archival heritage of the Universal Postal Union in the European archives - Reinalda, Bob (Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands)
The Directors(-General) of the Universal Postal Union 1874-2024
Philately in historical perspective
Chair: Combes, Benjamin (Universal Postal Union, Switzerland)
Presenters:
- Drolet, Yves (Académie québécoise d’études philatéliques, Canada)
Philatelists: witnesses and agents of the first globalization (1860-1914) - Libera, Maria (former UPU staff member, Worldwide Philatelic Observatory, Progress Market Research, Tunisia)
Safeguarding the added value of the postage stamp within UPU’s “single postal territory - Spoelder, Yorim (Freie Universität Berlin, German/ University College London)
Beyond philately: stamps and the iconography of globalization
15.45–16.45 The transnational making of national postal services
Chair: Godelier, Éric (École Polytechnique, Université Paris-Saclay, France)
Presenters:
- John, Richard R. (Columbia University, United States of America)
How the Universal Postal Union shaped postal policy in the United States, 1874–1913 - Kochersperger, Stephen A. (United States Postal Service, United States of America)
Transnational influence on the Development of United States Parcel Post - Farkas, Mónica (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina/ Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
Postal universalization: transformation of the space and time imaginaries in the second half of the 19th century in Argentina
16.45–18.00 Postal politics
Chair: Gillabert, Matthieu (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland)
Presenters:
- Baines, Gary (History Department, Rhodes University, South Africa)
Decolonization and postal politics: the UPU and sanctions against secessionist states and illegal regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, c.1961–1980 - Sato, Hideki (Faculty of Economics and Management, Kanazawa University, Japan/ The London School of Economics and Political Science)
Macro-, micro- and long-term perspectives to the UPU: the three dimensions for international harmonisation - Morales, Etienne (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, UMR CREDA, France)
Airmail in revolutionary Cuba: between embargo and bypass routes (1960s and 1970s) - Venugopal, Rajeev (Canada Post Corporation, Canada)
Delivering Diplomacy: The Universal Postal Union’s Role in a Post- Westphalian Global Order
Day 2 – Friday, 2 February 2024
9.00–10.30 Regionalizing postal cooperation – why and how?
Chair: Berth, Christiane (University of Graz, Austria)
Presenters:
- Godeffroy, Gabriel (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France, and Hildesheim University, Germany)
The Central European postal union: debates around world postal unification following the collapse of Austria-Hungary (1918–1929) - Proschmann, Sabrina (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany)
A replacement for the Universal Postal Union? The European Postal and Telecommunications Union of 1942 and its relations to the UPU - Vardabasso, Valentina (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
Origins of the European Postal Union: the 1946 Franco-Italian postal agreement - Hadhri, Mohieddine (Université de Tunis, Tunisia)
The Arab Postal Union, three quarters of a century on from its foundation in 1952. Overview of a specialized Arab organization and its cooperative relationship with the Universal Postal Union
10.45–12.15 The UPU material world: on stamps, envelopes and electronic mail
Chairs: Sund, Kristian (Roskilde University, Denmark), and Anson, José (Universal Postal Union, Switzerland)
Presenters:
- Piazza, Daniel A. (Smithsonian Institution, National Postal Museum, Washington, D.C., United States of America)
UPU specimen stamps and the world’s postal museums: an accidental history - Richez, Sébastien (Comité pour l’histoire de La Poste (CHP), Groupe La Poste, France)
The UPU and the standardization of the envelope in the 1960s: towards a universal language of mail - Henrich-Franke, Christian (Universität Siegen, Germany)
“Nothing can replace the Post” – electronic mail and the UPU in the 1980s
12.15–13.00 Scientific conclusions
Presenters:
Le Roux, Muriel (IHMC/CNRS/ENS, France)
Laborie, Léonard (CNRS, UMR Sirice, France)
Closing ceremony
Nach jedem Vortragsblock ist eine Diskussionsrunde vorgesehen. Zudem sind Kaffeepausen und am ersten Tag eine Mittagspause eingeplant.
Zu der Präsenzveranstaltung sind die Referenten, Delegierte der UPU-Mitglieder und wenige weitere Teilnehmer eingeladen. Geplant ist eine Live-Übertragung des Kolloquiums auf https://tv.upu.int/ Unklar ist (noch), ob die Präsentationen auch zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt abgerufen werden können.
Uwe Konst
