Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha

Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha PDF Author: Helen Godfrey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004357289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
In Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha, Helen Godfrey traces the connections between submarine telegraphy and the peoples of Singapore and Sarawak (Borneo) who supplied 'gutta percha', the latex insulating the world network of undersea telegraph cables. The book examines the complex inter-relationships linking metropolitan and local environments in a trade once described as a matter of interest to the whole civilized world. Using previously untapped corporate and official archives, trade data and a rich documentary record, the study explores the roles of cable producers, scientists, administrators, and local Chinese and indigenous traders. It reveals how a global trade may transcend technological, geographic and cross-cultural challenges, even hostilities. Motivations and outcomes are more complex than simple commercial gain.

Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha

Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha PDF Author: Helen Godfrey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004357289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
In Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha, Helen Godfrey traces the connections between submarine telegraphy and the peoples of Singapore and Sarawak (Borneo) who supplied 'gutta percha', the latex insulating the world network of undersea telegraph cables. The book examines the complex inter-relationships linking metropolitan and local environments in a trade once described as a matter of interest to the whole civilized world. Using previously untapped corporate and official archives, trade data and a rich documentary record, the study explores the roles of cable producers, scientists, administrators, and local Chinese and indigenous traders. It reveals how a global trade may transcend technological, geographic and cross-cultural challenges, even hostilities. Motivations and outcomes are more complex than simple commercial gain.

The Atlantic Telegraph

The Atlantic Telegraph PDF Author: Cyrus West FIELD
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cables, Submarine
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description


Commodities and Colonialism

Commodities and Colonialism PDF Author: G. Roger Knight
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004250514
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Sugar yesterday was what oil is today: a commodity of immense global importance whose tentacles reached deep into politics, society and economy. Indonesia's colonial-era sugar industry is largely forgotten today, except by a small number of regional specialists writing for a specialist audience. During the period 1880-1942 covered by this book, however, the then Netherlands Indies was one of the world's very greatest producer-exporters of the commodity. How it contrived to do so is the story presented in this book. Book jacket.

Imperial Science

Imperial Science PDF Author: Bruce J. Hunt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108830668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Explores how Britain's global cable network became both the 'nervous system' of its Empire and the key to electrical physics.

The Undersea Network

The Undersea Network PDF Author: Nicole Starosielski
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376229
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
In our "wireless" world it is easy to take the importance of the undersea cable systems for granted, but the stakes of their successful operation are huge, as they are responsible for carrying almost all transoceanic Internet traffic. In The Undersea Network Nicole Starosielski follows these cables from the ocean depths to their landing zones on the sandy beaches of the South Pacific, bringing them to the surface of media scholarship and making visible the materiality of the wired network. In doing so, she charts the cable network's cultural, historical, geographic and environmental dimensions. Starosielski argues that the environments the cables occupy are historical and political realms, where the network and the connections it enables are made possible by the deliberate negotiation and manipulation of technology, culture, politics and geography. Accompanying the book is an interactive digital mapping project, where readers can trace cable routes, view photographs and archival materials, and read stories about the island cable hubs.

Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence

Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence PDF Author: Pim de Zwart
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004299661
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence Pim de Zwart examines the Dutch East India Company’s intercontinental trade and its effects on living standards in various regions on the edges of the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contrary to conventional views, De Zwart finds significant evidence of the integration of global commodity markets, an important dimension of globalization, before the 1800s. The effects of this globalization, and the associated colonialism, were diverse and could vary between and within regions. As globalization and colonialism affected patterns of economic development across the globe they played a part in the rise of global economic inequality, known as the ‘Great Divergence’, in the early modern period.

The Victorians: A Botanical Perspective

The Victorians: A Botanical Perspective PDF Author: Luís Manuel Mendonça de Carvalho
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031687590
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description


Imperial Science

Imperial Science PDF Author: Bruce J. Hunt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108828543
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the second half of the nineteenth century, British firms and engineers built, laid, and ran a vast global network of submarine telegraph cables. For the first time, cities around the world were put into almost instantaneous contact, with profound effects on commerce, international affairs, and the dissemination of news. Science, too, was strongly affected, as cable telegraphy exposed electrical researchers to important new phenomena while also providing a new and vastly larger market for their expertise. By examining the deep ties that linked the cable industry to work in electrical physics in the nineteenth century - culminating in James Clerk Maxwell's formulation of his theory of the electromagnetic field - Bruce J. Hunt sheds new light both on the history of the Victorian British Empire and on the relationship between science and technology.

Marxism and Historical Practice (Vol. I)

Marxism and Historical Practice (Vol. I) PDF Author: Bryan D. Palmer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004243860
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
The two volumes of Marxism and Historical Practice bring together essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years. The pieces collected in Volume I, Interpretive Essays on Class Formation and Class Struggle, offer a stimulating, empirically grounded survey of North American collective behaviour, popular mobilizations, and social struggles, ranging from a rich discussion of ritualistic protest like the charivari through the rise of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s to campaigns against neoliberal labour reform in British Columbia in the early 1980s. What emerges is Palmer's sustained reflection on long-standing interpretive historical problems of class formation, the dynamics of social change, and how popular social movements arise and relate to law, the state, and existing cultural contexts.

Communications Under the Seas

Communications Under the Seas PDF Author: Bernard S. Finn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262012867
Category : Cables, Submarine
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The technology of undersea communications, from stranded-wire telegraph cables in the 1850s to fiber-optic cables at the end of the twentieth century, and its social, political, and economic impact. By the end of the twentieth century, fiber-optic technology had made possible a worldwide communications system of breathtaking speed and capacity. This amazing network is the latest evolution of communications technologies that began with undersea telegraph cables in the 1850s and continued with coaxial telephone cables a hundred years later. Communications under the Seas traces the development of these technologies and assesses their social, economic, and political effects. If we cannot predict the ultimate consequences of today's wired world--its impact on economic markets, free expression, and war and peace--or the outcome of the conflict between wired and wireless technology, we can examine how similar issues have been dealt with in the past. The expert contributors to this volume do just that, discussing technical developments in undersea cables (and the development of competing radio and satellite communications technology), management of the cables by private and public interests, and the impact on military and political activities. Chapters cover such topics as the daring group of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who wove a network of copper wires around the world (and then turned conservative with success); the opening of the telegraphic network to general public use; the government- and industry-forced merger of wireless and cable companies in Britain; and the impact of the cable network on diplomacy during the two world wars.