Sunday, November 28, 2010

Postage stamps and postal history of Portuguese India

Just now I have visited a group called Postage stamps and postal history of Portuguese India on Facebook pages. I just liked the page and would like to introduce the same to you. The postal history of Portuguese India goes back to the earlier days of the colony. Top-1The postal history begins with communication between the Viceroy and the Court at Lisbon soon after the conquest of Old Goa by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510. Letters, written in triplicate, were carried by separate ships because of the hazards of the voyage. Mail was carried by an overland route, as well. The early communications of Portuguese India had an official character and the correspondence is now to be found in museums and governmental and ecclesiastical archives. Regular mail is known to have been exchanged with Lisbon from 1825 on. Portuguese Indian postmarks are known from 1854, when a post office opened in Goa and an extraterritorial British East India Company post office opened in Damaun. A Portuguese Indian post office opened at Diu, also, in 1880. Before the Universal Postal Union was established in 1874, a country had to conclude a separate postal treaty with each other country with which it transacted international mail. Portugal had a postal convention with Great Britain, so mail was routed through Bombay and carried on British packets.

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