Mail in the Levant: Beirut, crossroads of steamships and empires

In his third book on postal history, Mail in the Levant | Beirut. A case study in the early age of steamship & globalization (1835–1914), Semaan Bassil explores Beirut’s exceptional role as a hub of international mail and trade in the 19th century. The 240-page publication traces the presence of six foreign post offices—the Russian, Austrian, German, British, Egyptian, and French—established between 1845 and 1914, and sheds light on the city’s rising importance in the Eastern Mediterranean. A port of silk, quarantine, and diplomacy, Beirut emerges here as a strategic threshold between inland empires and overseas capitals, between Ottoman governance and European influence, at the dawn of philately and global commerce.

To bring the complexity of the subject to life, -scope Ateliers worked closely with the author to translate archival material and scholarly research into a richly illustrated, visually compelling book. Across its 15 chapters, the design interweaves rare letters, envelopes, maps, photographs, and other postal ephemera—unpublished documents sourced from archives in France, England, and Turkey. Through design and editorial structure, the studio shaped an immersive reading experience that mirrors the layered and transitional nature of the time: an age when mail routes shaped geopolitics, and Beirut stood at the heart of it all.