Telegraph Diplomats

The United States' Relations with France in 1848 and 1870

Bibliographic Data

ID4024760
AuthorsDavid Nickles, David Paull Nickles (corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume40
Issue1
Pages1-25
Publication date1999-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTechnology and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tech.1999.0049
OpenAlexW1981334062
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited24

Telegraph Diplomats: The United States’ Relations with France in 1848 and 1870 David Paull Nickles (bio) At eleven o’clock on the morning of 24 February 1848, Richard Rush, the United States’ minister to France, composed a hurried letter to James Buchanan. Rush had delayed his dispatch to the American secretary of state as long as he could without missing “the steamer that leaves Liverpool the day after to-morrow.” Later messages would have to wait upon the Caledonia, a ship scheduled to depart from Liverpool on 12 March. Rush explained that he had postponed writing his missive “in the hope of giving you, in a few lines, the most recent information of the important events in progress here.” Mobs and soldiers had clashed in the streets of Paris, and there was some evidence that the troops had fired only reluctantly upon the people. The situation was “little short of revolutionary,” yet so turbulent that the American diplomat declared his inability to say with any certainty what had happened. “Even now,” Rush concluded, “when I am closing this communication, lest it should be out of time . . . my servants bring in rumors that the king has abdicated.” 1 Two decades later, on 4 September 1870, another U.S. minister to France, Elihu B. Washburne, confronted a similar situation. Paris was again a scene of chaos and political revolution, this time following devastating French military defeats and the capture of Emperor Napoleon III during the Franco-Prussian War. But Washburne, unlike Rush, could contact the State Department by telegraph. This article considers the conduct of U.S. foreign policy toward France during these two years, 1848 and 1870, when [End Page 1] political upheaval focused American attention on that country. The similarities between the two cases provide a useful framework for an assessment of the diplomatic influences of the Atlantic telegraph cable. During the early years of the Atlantic cable, telegraphy permitted a greater centralization of American diplomacy, but the financial, technical, and cultural difficulties associated with its use not only impeded its adoption but also posed significant dangers for foreign ministries. Some contemporaries portrayed the completion of a transatlantic cable as the greatest technological achievement of the age. According to the Reverend Rufus W. Clark, the cable was a marvel: “We feel that we have reached another of those great epochs in the world’s history.” The London Times declared, “Since the discovery of COLUMBUS, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the enlargement thus given to the sphere of human activity.” 2 Such rhetoric raises questions about the relationship between the Atlantic cable and historians’ arguments over the notion of a communications revolution. As with the expression “industrial revolution,” American historians have found the term “communications revolution” a provocative and useful shorthand for changes in information flows during the modern era. Nonetheless, this revolution has not brought analytical clarity, as is best demonstrated by the wide differences among historians over how and when it began. 3 The complexity and heterogeneity of phenomena subsumed under the phrase “communications revolution” make [End Page 2] disagreement understandable and suggest the value of getting beyond this broad generalization to investigate how changes in communications affected the texture of everyday life. A number of scholars have acknowledged the social importance of telegraphy despite the lack of consensus on its relationship to the communications revolution. Of particular note, business historians have begun to weigh the telegraph’s influence upon information flows, efficiency, middlemen, and the size of firms. 4 Historians of diplomacy have been far slower to consider the significance of telegraphy, despite their discipline’s focus on a subject—communications within and between the geographically dispersed organizations known as foreign ministries—likely to have been affected by the advent of telecommunications. 5 The completion of a transatlantic telegraph cable had particular significance for American diplomacy because of the importance of the Atlantic Ocean in the history of the United States. A consideration of Franco-American diplomacy during 1848 and 1870 reveals the dramatic changes in the pace of transatlantic information flows that occurred between these years. Yet, despite these changes, it would be anachronistic to describe communication between France and America in 1848

Ancient history · Economic history · Emperor · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law

Tools

Open DOI