Roland Wenzlhuemer. Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World

Roland Wenzlhuemer has written a deeply researched study of the telegraph and its contribution to globalization in the late nineteenth century. Much has been written about this technology, including the important works of Paul Kennedy, Daniel R. Headrick, and Anton A. Huurdeman, but Wenzlhuemer, through extraordinary archival efforts, has added a mass of quantitative material that elucidates the spread and distribution of the telegraph, both globally and in Britain and British India. He has also introduced a number of new concepts, drawing upon histories of science and technology, to the discussion of the telegraph. Wenzlhuemer sets himself the task of exploring “the relationship between actors and network technologies in a historical context” (p. 14). As he puts it, “How do the functions that such technologies fulfil for their users and the ways in which they are applied shape the network structure? And, in turn, how do these structural conditions then feed back into the rationale of the technology?” (p. 14). The heart of the book, then, is an examination of the interactions between humans and the global telegraph system of the nineteenth century.

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