Review: Communication and Empire

Abstract

COMMUNICATION AND EMPIRE Media, Markets and Globalization, 1860-1930 Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. xx, 429pp, US $24.95 (ISBN 978-0-8223-3928-1)Globalization is a topic de jour in the academic world, and the last few years have seen a flurry of new books by all manner of scholars. Some of these works are insightful and reflect careful research, such as Kevin O'Rourke's and Jeffrey Williamson's recent examination of globalization's roots in the 19th century. Others are not, and range from the polemical to the pop treatments of the phenomenon. Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike's recent Communication and Empire seeks to be among the former. While the work is sweeping in its scope and properly centres on communications technology as a key driving factor in globalization, this book suffers from serious analytic and evidentiary shortcomings.Winseck, a communications professor, and Pike, a sociologist, aim at four main points to engage historical arguments about globalization. They suggest that the media of companies controlling content and delivery was far more multinational and interconnected than historians have understood, and that national interests played a smaller role in the evolution of the field than has been argued. They do this by looking at the development of the international communications system, from the early years of submarine cable telegraphy through the beginning of Great Depression. They also want to reinforce the growing consensus of scholars that globalization is not a contemporary phenomenon but one dating from the 19th century. They wish to argue in addition that the spread of international communications and the rise of globalization was in many ways autonomous from late 19th century imperialism (and that this insight should influence current policy decisions). They want to make the case that refined understanding about global communications should lead scholars to new insights on prewar nationalism, postwar politics, and the Wilsonian vision of world order.These are important arguments to raise. The development of steam-powered transportation and electrical telegraphy in the first half of the 19th century significantly altered the continental and then international movement of goods, money, people, and ideas. The deeper effects of this upon global finance and commerce, cultural relations, military affairs, and geopolitics are still not entirely understood by scholars. Thus, Winseck and Pike are correct to emphasize that although globalization is not a recent phenomenon, it is no longer the radical conclusion it once was. In emphasizing the role of reformers or modernizers who decried the oligarchic nature of the global cable system and pursued change, they usefully remind us that some concerns about globalization are also not new phenomena. The authors are on solid ground when urging us to think about imperialism not just in terms of formal territorial control but also informal economic or political sway. We should recognize that the spread of international communications had lasting effects on both ends of the relationship. Indeed, Winseck and Pike lead us to think about imperialism as a form of collaboration among the great powers and about their shared dependency on the international communications system. There is something to be said for this, because it echoes Alfred Thayer Mahan's contemporary arguments about maritime transportation and defence of the global commons by a transnational consortium of naval powers.While the subjects they highlight are significant, and their evidentiary base is extensive, Winseck's and Pike's work suffers from substantial problems. These undermine their case and leave many questions unanswered. The authors rely upon an impressive mix of archival materials and secondary literature, but they have confused the significance of some evidence while overlooking essential (and even corroborating) material from those same sources. …