Nowadays stamps are universally accepted. We take it for granted that if we stick a stamp on an envelope at the appropriate rate it will be delivered safely to the addressee on the other side of the world in a matter of days at no further cost to the recipient. It was not always the case.

Back in the 1840s stamps had no more than local validity and only facilitated the transmission of mail within the frontiers of the country of issue. Yet, at a very early stage, it became possible to send letters to some of the British colonies from Britain using the new-fangled stamps. Although there does not appear to have been an specific regulation permitting this, as early as 1841 stamps were being affixed to letters going as far as Malta, as the famous ‘Lady Louis’ cover testifies. This very valuable envelope, addressed to Lady Louis in Malta, consisted of a Mulready twopenny envelope to which had been added a strip of five Twopenny Blues, making up the shilling rate from England to Malta via the Falmouth Packet.

This usage was probably quite exceptional and certainly there was no reciprocal arrangement. It should be noted that the Maltese post offices were at that time operated as part of the General Post Office whose headquarters were in London, but the use of adhesive stamps in Malta and other colonies did not become general until the 1860s.

In the 1840s mail between two or more countries depended on a complex system of postal treaties and conventions. Broadly speaking, the contracting countries would agree to forward each other’s mail on some reciprocal basis, sometimes with an annual cash adjustment depending on the volume of mail passing from one to the other.

This was an exceedingly cumbersome procedure before the general adoption of adhesive stamps. Invariably the sender had to pay the postage up front. In some cases it was only possible to pay the postage to the frontier, leaving it to the recipient to pay the internal postage from the frontier to the destination.

Britain led the way in arranging bilateral postal treaties, mainly because British ships plied the seven seas. In this manner, for example, British post offices and postal agencies were established in many parts of the world mainly for the handling of international mail in countries which lacked such arrangements. At first handstruck marks indicated the prepayment of postage, the much sought after ‘crowned paid’ marks, but later on British stamps were employed, distinguished by their postmarks.

By 1850, however, Austria, Prussia and a number of the kingdoms, principalities and duchies of the German-speaking world formed the German-Austrian Postal Union which not only facilitated the free passage of mail among the various countries of the union, but played an important part in influencing the colours used to denote the various postal rates, so that sorting clerks could immediately recognise whether mail was correctly stamped or not.

This was a principle that the Universal Postal Union tried to develop, although it was not until 1891 that a colour code was agreed for the basic international rates: printed matter (green), postcards (red) and letters (blue). Thus the denominations intended for these purposes were printed in these colours. At the turn of the 20th century, therefore these colours were widely used in the British Empire for the _d, 1d and 2_d stamps respectively, and had their counterparts in many other countries. Thus green was the colour of the American 1 cent, the French 5 centimes and the German 5 pfennig, red the colour of the 2 cents, 10 centimes and 10 pfennig, and blue the colour of the 5 cents, 25 centimes and 25 pfennig. The UPU colour code continued until World War I when inflation played havoc with postal charges, but it lingered on in Britain till 1940 and the USA till the 1950s.

The earliest stamps were of purely local validity and for that reason there was no need to include the name of the issuing country in the inscription, In practice, however, many nations included some reference to the country of issue, especially from 1850 onwards when the number of different stamps was rising rapidly. Britain clung to the tradition that Queen Victoria’s profile was sufficient identification and when the Universal Postal Union in 1874 stipulated that all stamps for international use must bear the country name, Britain was exempted in view of her position as the premier stamp producer.

This custom has continued right down to the present day and was no mere conceit since no inscription would have adequately expressed the area in which the stamps were valid. Such expressions as ‘Great Britain’ or ‘United Kingdom’ would have been incorrect since British stamps were also used in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man which, constitutionally speaking, are not part of the United Kingdom. This problem, however, has been obviated since 1969 by the issue of distinctive stamps in Guernsey and Jersey and since 1973 by the emergence of separate stamps in the Isle of Man. Thus it would be possible to use the expression ‘UK Posts’ and, in fact, this now appears on prestamped aerogrammes, but it has never been extended to adhesive stamps, and after more than 160 years the tradition of anonymity seems likely to remain.

From time to time other countries have breached the UPU regulation. As recently as 1963 the USA issued stamps depicting the Stars and Stripes over the White House without an indication of the country of origin. Doubtless it was felt that ‘Old Glory’ was sufficient identification. By and large, however, this regulation is closely adhered to, even if the inscription is sometimes obscure or cryptical. There have even been stamps from Guernsey recently which include the letters UK to denote the rate appropriate on mail addressed to the United Kingdom.