The data file aim’s to release, the most faithfully in function of the available sources for the researcher, the main statistical series which symbolize the postal service in France about the organization, the infrastructures, the staffs, stocks and products.
It deals with the following items: mail and parcels traffic, postmen staffs, number and type of the post offices, equipments, stamps emission and sale, dead letters, Girocheque and Post Saving Banks counts, postal money order, etc.; the main parts of the postal activity are reconstituted in statistical series from the beginning of the 19th century.
The chronology is defined by two dates (which could be overstepped in function of the interest) determining the two major statutory periods of the French Post Office.
- 1804: definitive end of the Ferme générale des Postes: the French Post Office becomes a general direction of the Finances ministry, to 1879 when it has been transformed in PTT ministry.
- 1990: PTT ministry disappearance and the French Post Office becomes a public industrial and commercial enterprise (EPIC).
The release of the database has been made possible thanks to many sources detailed here.
In the present state of the research in progress, it turns out that it is impossible to release integral series during all the period. Many deficiencies in the sources explain this fact, because of the war’s periods, because the data given by the Administration’s sources don’t correspond between several documents, because of the destruction of the information. But, this research is in progress that is to say that its updating will be regular thanks to the contributions of the historians, and may allow completing the series.
