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This article introduces a special issue on postal traffic from the perspective of global history. It focuses as much on how this traffic was organized as on their content, both legal and illegal, since the 18th century, at all levels: local, imperial, national and international. Neglected by the historiography of global communications compared to telecommunications, the post is nevertheless the vector for and expression of myriad interactions which shape the sinews of modern and contemporary globalizations. Administrative and commercial correspondence, tourist postcards, migrants’ letters and money orders: these communications do more than simply reflect the administration of distant territories, commerce, tourism, and planetary migrations. Such communications shape and are reciprocally shaped by these factors. This perspective sees the emergence of postal global governance as crucial, through the founding of the General Postal Union in 1874, which became the Universal Postal Union in 1878. A specialized agency of the United Nations since 1947, the mission of this international organization is to forge “a single postal territory” of standards, tariffs, and regulations. At the same time, the organization offers its members a space to construct sovereignty in an age of interdependence. Postalizing globalization and, conversely, globalizing national posts: these are the two main contributions of this special issue.