Leading the way for a global postal service
In 1619, the office of Postmaster General for Foreign Parts was created with the appointment of Matthew de Quester. The mail service with foreign countries was tiny in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The foreign Post Office, as it was called only had a staff of four men in 1660.
At the time of the Napoleonic wars, postal connections with other countries were difficult. In order to make it easier, the government formed a network of administrations in other countries to establish an overseas service.
Benjamin Franklin was the Postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737 under the British Parliamentary Post.
