Most of the larger countries established shipping routes to assist them in gathering the essential information they needed: market prices of all important commodities, production volumes, political and military actuality etc.
France, Austria, Russia, Italy and Germany: all established or subsidized various shipping lines linking the most important trading centres of the world with the motherland.
None of these networks was however as extensive as the British. For instance, in the Americas alone, besides their own colonial possessions, they had 57 ports of call in foreign countries where consuls or packet agents acted as postmaster and collected/delivered the mails on a regular basis.
Also, the Mediterranean network was well organized: besides their Gibraltar and Maltese military bases the British ensured their vital communication links with India and the Far East avoiding the long and risky route via the Cape. They controlled or had postal organizations in the Ionian Islands, Cyprus, the main Egyptian ports such as Alexandria with the overland route from Cairo to Suez created by the Waghorn initiative since 1835, all were part of the ‘worldwide information web’, the 19th century. Multiple letters, very well described and explained, explanations of markings, …
