1850–1851 YILLARINA AİT ÜÇ AYLIK VERİLERE GÖRE VARNA POSTANESİNİN FAALİYETLERİ
THE ACTIVITIES OF THE VARNA POST OFFICE BASED ON THREE MONTHS OF EVIDENCE (1850-1851)

Summary/Abstract: Initial efforts to establish a modern Ottoman postal system commenced during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II, with the first regular postal route being constructed in 1834. This initiative achieved institutional stability through the 1840 regulation enacted under Sultan Abdülmecid, which facilitated the proliferation of regular (muntazam) and irregular (gayrımuntazam) post offices, thereby placing civilian communications under state jurisdiction. This article focuses on the activities of the Varna Post Office—a regular postal establishment in Rumelia during the Abdülmecid era—between 1850 and 1851, by conducting a holistic analysis of three accounting registers (march–april 1850, september–october 1850, and february–march 1851). The primary objective of this study is to delineate the city’s postal network and its ethno-religious profile, which reveals that the clientele was predominantly non-Muslim, whereas Muslim users represented a more elite segment, as evidenced by their titles. Furthermore, the study aims to quantitatively measure the "interaction energy" generated by the post office through the concept of "communicative volume," formulated based on the "1 para = 1 hour" rule of the Ottoman postal tariff. Although the land postal traffic of Varna, an important Black Sea port city, was primarily regional—covering the Bulgarian geography—it exhibited a flexible structure that expanded its geographical range periodically. Despite a limited shipment volume averaging 120 letters per month, it was determined that the communicative volume (time-space labor) produced by Varna gained momentum when monthly revenues were converted into hours. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that while the regular postal system maintained a routine regional flow, it possessed an operational capacity to reach distant regions up to 500 kilometers when necessary.

• Details
• Contents