The French post offices abroad were a global network of post office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

s in foreign countries established by France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 to provide mail

Mail

Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...

 service where the local services were deemed unsafe or unreliable. They were generally set up in cities with some sort of French commercial interest.

They started appearing in the early 19th century, reached their heyday at the beginning of the 20th century, then started closing down in the 1910s and 1920s, with the office at Kwangchou in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 holding out until the 1940s.

Offices abroad:

• French post offices in China
  French post offices in China
  The French post offices in China were among the post offices maintained by foreign powers in China around the beginning of the 20th century. The French government issued special postage stamps for these offices beginning in 1894, initially for all the offices, then overprinted with the name of the...
  
  
• French post offices in Crete
  French post offices in Crete
  The French post offices in Crete were among a collection of post offices maintained by foreign countries during the 1900s in Crete, after Crete had broken away from the Ottoman Empire and before it united with Greece, in 1913....
  
  
• French post offices in Egypt
  French post offices in Egypt
  The French post offices in Egypt were a system of post offices maintained by France in Egypt during the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century...
  
  
• French post offices in the Ottoman Empire
  French post offices in the Ottoman Empire
  The French post offices in the Ottoman Empire were post offices in various cities of the Ottoman Empire run by France between 1812 and 1923. France was one of nine countries that had negotiated "Capitulations" with the Ottomans, various extraterritorial rights in exchange for trade opportunities...
  
  
• French post offices in Zanzibar
  French post offices in Zanzibar
  The French post offices in Zanzibar were post offices operated by France in Zanzibar from 1894 to 1904, when the United Kingdom took direct control of what had previously been a protectorate. Early issues were French stamps overprinted in the local currency...
  
  

Sources

• Stanley Gibbons Ltd: various catalogues
• Encyclopaedia of Postal History
• Rossiter, Stuart
  Stuart Rossiter
  Percival "Stuart" Bryce Rossiter was a renowned British philatelist and postal historian who wrote extensively about British postal history and postage stamps of British colonies in Africa and was actively involved in numerous philatelic institutions...
  
  & John Flower. The Stamp Atlas. London: Macdonald, 1986. ISBN 0356108627