The “wiring of the world” with telegraphic cables was a project pursued by a heterogeneous and transnational group of engineers, inventors and financiers working with various nation states, multinational consortia and international agencies. Submarine telegraphy played a vital role in the development of global communication networks and its implications for processes of globalization in the 19th century. What began with the first successful transatlantic cable in 1866 resulted in a truly global network of telegraph lines that can be called the beginning of a second media revolution after Gutenberg’s introduction of the printing press with movable type.
Intercontinental telegraphy is situated at the intersection of various disciplines and sub-disciplines, such as the history of technology, media studies, cultural, political and economic history. Innovative studies have been written focusing on the concepts of “global economy” and “global politics“. New works in the field of global media studies discuss the interrelation and interdependence between imperialism and telecommunication in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Economic and political issues were shaped by processes of regional and global integration and the emergence of transnational communication networks and vice versa. Several new approaches to the history of global telecommunication deal with cultural and social aspects of cable networks and telegraphy.
The conference “Global Communication Electric: Social, Cultural, and Political Aspects of Telegraphy in the 19th Century” will attempt to bring researchers into contact with each other, map existing approaches and open new avenues of research to be taken in the future. Embracing a global history approach, the conference will focus on processes of global and regional integration, cultural transfer and translation as well as aspects of space, place and agency. The conference’s major issues concern the interdependence of communication and globalization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, processes of glocalization, the transnational entanglements and international organization of the cable enterprises and communication networks. Focusing on the actors of telegraphy in a broad sense, it also questions models of modernization and progress that result in a homogenizing juxtaposition of “the west and the rest”.
We invite papers dealing with the following themes:
1. Telegraphy and the History of Globalization
How are processes of globalization and the history of telegraphy interrelated? What is the role of international organizations such as the ITU and nation states and empires? How did the telegraph help structure particular models of modernity? What were the cultural ideals the advocates and agents of telegraphy sought to spread?
2. Telegraphic Glocalization of Space
What were the nodal points of the global networks? How did “the local” relate to “the global” and were they structured differently, for example at a telegraph station? How did cable workers, the telegraph girls, operators and messenger boys relate to the global product? How did global communication change the setting of a particular locality?
3. Telegraphic Entanglements: Telegraphy and Empire
What role did the telegraph play in western civilizing missions? Here we encourage papers moving beyond the thesis that telegraphy fostered the imperial control of a colonial periphery. What was telegraphy’s role in processes of translation, mimicry, hybridization and colonial resistance? How did the telegraph help in constructing the Orient?
4. Telegraphy and Global Communication
Who would actually make use of the access to global communication and who remained un-connected? Was it indeed a global public that emerged? How was a global communication space structured and constructed by news agencies and newspapers? How did factors such as race, class, and gender influence the development of global communication networks? What was the nature and materiality of the data transmitted?
5. Failure, Faults & Flaws
What could be done against cable break and loss at sea? Did sabotage and obstruction play a role in the rivalry and competition in the communications market? What were the strategic implications of eavesdropping, wiretapping and interception? How was security constructed by means of code and cipher?
The conference will be concluded by a public history panel addressing issues of curatorial practice, archival research as well as historic preservation and public accessibility.
Contributors are invited from the disciplines of history, anthropology, law, sociology, political sciences as well as neighboring disciplines. Pending the definite confirmation of funding, travel expenses and accommodation costs may be covered. The conference language will be English. Proposals must be submitted by 31 August 2010. Participants will be informed by September 2010.
To apply, please send a CV of no more than 2 pages and an abstract of up to 1.000 words, preferably as PDF to:
Prof. M. Michaela Hampf
Simone Müller, M.A.
John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, History Department
Freie Universität Berlin
Lansstrasse 7-9
14195 Berlin, Germany
hampf@jfki.fu-berlin.de
mueller@jfki.fu-berlin.de