Editing Universal Postal Union (section)

=== General Postal Union ===
[[File:Georg Barlösius Heinrich von Stephan.jpg|thumb|upright|Heinrich von Stephan, German Postmaster-General and founder of the General Postal Union]]

Faced with such difficulties in exchanging mail with Europe, the United States had already taken the lead in calling for improvements to international mail arrangements. [[United States Postmaster General]] [[Montgomery Blair]] called for an International Postal Congress in 1863. Meeting in Paris, the delegates laid down some general principles for postal cooperation but failed to come to an agreement.<ref name="upu_history">{{cite web |title=History |url=http://news.upu.int/insight/history/ |website=Universal Postal Union |access-date=25 September 2019 |archive-date=25 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190925162451/http://news.upu.int/insight/history/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The German victory in the Franco-Prussian War cleared away the obstacles to a postal union. After defeating Napoleon III in 1870, the [[North German Confederation]] and the South German states united to form the [[German Empire]]. The German [[Reichspost]] established a uniform set of postage rates and regulations for the new country, but the uniformity ended at the German border. Different amounts of postage were required to mail a letter from Berlin to New York, depending on which ship carried the letter across the Atlantic Ocean.<ref name="krueger">{{cite journal |last=Krueger |first=Karl K. |title=By Post to Peace |journal=The Rotarian |date=January 1938 |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=38–39 |hdl=2027/uva.x004697857?urlappend=%3Bseq=896 |url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x004697857?urlappend=%3Bseq=896 |access-date=26 September 2020 |archive-date=9 October 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241009055125/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x004697857;seq=896 |url-status=live }}</ref> To bring order to the system of international mail, German Postmaster-General [[Heinrich von Stephan]] called for another [[Postal Union Congress|International Postal Congress]] in 1874.<ref name="krueger" />

Meeting in [[Bern]], Switzerland, the delegates agreed to all of von Stephan's proposals.<ref name="krueger" /> The [[Treaty of Bern]] was signed on 9 October 1874, establishing what was then known as the ''General Postal Union''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Willoughby |first=Martin |title=A History of Postcards |year=1992 |publisher=Bracken Books |location=London, England |isbn=1858911621 |page=31 }}</ref>

The treaty provided that:
# There should be a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world
# Postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail
# Each country should retain all money it has collected for international postage.

One important result of the Treaty was that it was no longer necessary to affix [[postage stamp]]s of countries that a mailpiece passed through in transit. The UPU provides that stamps from member nations are accepted along the entire international route.