Journey of a 1903 Postcard – Constantinople to Shanghai via Cameroon

A 1903 postcard sent from Constantinople to Shanghai via “Kamerun” (Cameroon) posted during the German colonial period of Cameroon and so stamped “Victoria”, today’s Limbé. Limbé was founded in 1858 by British missionary Alfred Saker and so named after Queen Victoria. Kamerun was an African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1916.

The card was sent to Julius V. Petersen, working as co-manager and chief technical director for the Danish company in China during the early 1900s and 1910s. The Great Northern Telegraph Company (GNT) brought its first submarine telegraph line ashore near Shanghai in 1871. Petersen began working at the company’s early regional hubs (in Nagasaki, Japan) as a young clerk and assistant alongside early superintendents. By 1897, he had risen to become the chief Accountant for GNT’s joint operations in China and Japan. He managed the massive capital and billing flows generated by the strategic undersea cables connecting Hong Kong, Shanghai and Nagasaki.

The full address is not on the card as presumably the sender assumed everyone knew that GNT was at #7 Bund and had been since 1881. The company set up first telephone switch in Shanghai within the building in 1882.