allyoursocks
Thailand
During the reign of King Rama IV, people sent letters by messenger or with friends planned to travel. By 1860, most countries printed postage stamps, with the exception of Thailand, where the first stamps appeared in 1883. King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) authorized a Ministry for Posts and Telegraphs,
in a speech reported in The Siam Weekly Advertiser:
When Siam shall have established telephonic communication with British Burmah or the Straits Settlements and Saigon, it will be necessary to put at her disposition the necessary means for assuring the transportation of correspondence, such as already exist in all countries which are favoured with postal facilities. To-day within the Kingdom everyone is obliged to provide for sending his correspondence by his own messengers, which causes a considerable loss of both time and money. The more our correspondence increases the more will this inconvenience make itself felt. We have, then, decided upon the organisation of a postal service for Bangkok, a service which will be successively extended to other provinces as soon as it may be possible to do so. This organisation will meet with very many difficulties in Siam; the inhabitants of the country will have trouble in comprehending the usefulness and advantages of such a service and their doubts will not disappear until they have seen it in active operation. The Government, upon its side, will derive no benefit from it, because the number of correspondents is very limited in this country. If we establish it at present, it is, then, because we desire to see it keep pace with the service of the telegraph lines and because we think that it will be profitable to our commerce…We have hopes that the success which this work will meet with, will contribute greatly to hasten the moment when our Kingdom can be admitted to the grand confederation of civilized nations. Siam can not, nor does she wish to be, much longer ranked among the barbarian nations.
Thailand
During the reign of King Rama IV, people sent letters by messenger or with friends planned to travel. By 1860, most countries printed postage stamps, with the exception of Thailand, where the first stamps appeared in 1883. King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) authorized a Ministry for Posts and Telegraphs,
in a speech reported in The Siam Weekly Advertiser:
When Siam shall have established telephonic communication with British Burmah or the Straits Settlements and Saigon, it will be necessary to put at her disposition the necessary means for assuring the transportation of correspondence, such as already exist in all countries which are favoured with postal facilities. To-day within the Kingdom everyone is obliged to provide for sending his correspondence by his own messengers, which causes a considerable loss of both time and money. The more our correspondence increases the more will this inconvenience make itself felt. We have, then, decided upon the organisation of a postal service for Bangkok, a service which will be successively extended to other provinces as soon as it may be possible to do so. This organisation will meet with very many difficulties in Siam; the inhabitants of the country will have trouble in comprehending the usefulness and advantages of such a service and their doubts will not disappear until they have seen it in active operation. The Government, upon its side, will derive no benefit from it, because the number of correspondents is very limited in this country. If we establish it at present, it is, then, because we desire to see it keep pace with the service of the telegraph lines and because we think that it will be profitable to our commerce…We have hopes that the success which this work will meet with, will contribute greatly to hasten the moment when our Kingdom can be admitted to the grand confederation of civilized nations. Siam can not, nor does she wish to be, much longer ranked among the barbarian nations.