THE GLOBAL MEDIA AND THE EMPIRE OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM, CIRCA 1910–301

1. We would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) for supporting the research project upon which this artilce is based. This article presents some of the key findings of that research project. The full version of our research is available in Communication and Empire: Media, Markets and Globalization, 1860–1930 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).

Abstract

This article briefly sketches the rise of the global media system after the mid-1860s before turning to the transformation of that system during the First World War and until the end of the 1920s. In particular, we look at how technological changes, especially the development of wireless and, by late 1926, short-wave radio, were dealt with by the companies that ran the world's vast network of undersea cables, news organizations and governments. We show that responses to new technologies varied greatly, with some trying to blunt their impact while others embraced them. Mergers and acquisitions were a key response to the new technologies and to the worldwide economic boom of the 1920s. However, by the end of the decade, the economic logic behind these changes was eclipsed by a discourse of technological determinism, nationalistic corporate patriotism and imperial security. These ideological discourses underpinned a series of mergers throughout Europe and Britain, most notably the formation of Cable and Wireless in 1929. Similar pressures were at play in the USA, notably in RCA and the International Telephone and Telegraph Company's own bid to create a global multimedia conglomerate, although restrictions on cross-media ownership in the Radio Act (1927) and Congressional concern about the formation of a military–communications–media complex stymied the attempt. Altogether, however, the reorganization of the global media business at the end of the 1920s reflected and reinforced the collapse of this early era of globalization – the empire of liberal internationalism – and the rise of a new geopolitical–economic regime based on the struggle for the control of global communication, virulent nationalism and relative autarchy, not to be reversed until the revival of globalization in our own times.

Keywords:

• global media history
• empire
• internationalism
• mergers

Notes

1. We would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) for supporting the research project upon which this artilce is based. This article presents some of the key findings of that research project. The full version of our research is available in Communication and Empire: Media, Markets and Globalization, 1860–1930 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).

2. This view is well illustrated in Headrick; Hills; Kennedy; and many others, and rests upon a ‘realist’ perspective that privileges competition between national interests for control over resources as the basis of international relations. In contrast we adopt a ‘systems’ view in which power is a function of interdependencies among actors and their ability to shape decision-making agendas as well as by forging relationships with others, exercising control over resources (material and symbolic), setting the ‘rules of the game’ and making the basic goals and acceptable range of action that is open to all actors a part of the system. We derive this view from Lukes; Cox; Hogan Entente; Paths.

3. Our concept of empire draws on the combined definitions of ‘territorial’ and ‘capitalist’ imperialism outlined by Harvey and also Schmidt and Long's discussion of how the interplay between imperialism and liberal internationalism constituted the context of international relations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

4. See also Globe Telegraph and Trust Company, Memorandum of Articles of Association, 11 July 1873 as well as Minutes, 1 Jan. 1874. In Globe Telegraph and Trust (1872–80) Board Meeting Minute Book (Vol. 1), 25 Apr. 1873, City of London Libraries, Guildhall, MSS 24 212.

5. For ease of exposition, we have condensed the names of the major cable companies to reflect their common ownership and conventional forms of reference found in the literature. Thus, the French Cable Company was formerly known as Compagnie Française des Câbles Télégraphiques, which itself was an amalgamation, after 1892, of several smaller companies. The German Cable Company consisted of four companies, all commonly owned by Felten and Guilleaume: Deutsche Atlantische Telegraphen Ges, Deutsche See Telegraphen Ges, Deutsche Sudamerikanische Telegraphen Ges and Deutsch-Niderlandische Telegraphen Ges. The All-America Company was an amalgamation of the Mexican Telegraph Company and the Central and South America Telegraph Company and renamed as such in 1920.

6. Public Records Office (UK), BT 31/5102/3463 South American Cable Company, Ltd 189, Memorandum and Articles of Association South American Cable Company, 1891.

7. PRO. FO 228/3416. Dossier 1120 Telegraphs and Cables, Vol. II (China Related), Apr. 1921–July 1922.

8. This material on Reuters mainly from PRO. TS 27/90. Treasury Secretary (1917)–22) Reuters Ltd: Agreement with Foreign Office as to Services and Important Pieces of Correspondence therein from: Roderick M. Jones Correspondence with Alexander Lawrence, Treasury Solicitor's Office, 4 June 1919; Alexander Lawrence, Treasury Solicitor, Correspondence with S. Geselee, Foreign Office, 20 Apr. 1919; Alexander Lawrence, Treasury Solicitor's Office, Correspondence with C.H. Montgomery, Foreign Office, Re: New Public Policy Letter with Reuters, 31 Oct. 1918; Mark F. Nathier, Letter to the Directors of the Reuters Telegraph Company, Ltd, 21 Nov. 1916; Robert Cecil, Foreign Office, correspondence with Mark Napier and Roderick Jones outlining arrangements with Reuters, 8 Dec. 1916. The following pages also rely on the main historian of Reuters during the 1990s (Read 1999).

9. See PRO. T161/1, Treasury (1921), Communications: Telegraph: General: News Service to Overseas Dominions and Colonies, 7 June 1920–2 Nov. 1923: Memorandum from C. Carey Clements, Manager and Secretary Reuters: Report on Supplementary Cable Service to Dominions and Colonies Prepared for the Foreign Office, 16 Aug. 1920.

10. NARA, RG 59, 574 D11 Box 5558, Walter Rogers, Memorandum to Under-Sec. of State re. International Communications Conference, 8 June 1921: 16; Mackay Companies Annual Report 1922 6.

11. NARA, RG 59, 574 D11 Box 5558. Ernest E. Power, Third Asst. Sec. of State, Memorandum to Sec. of State Robert Lansing re. International Telegraphic Communication, 15 Jan. 1919: 30.

12. The experimental development of short-wave occurred between 1920 and 1924 and the technology was not commercialized until 1927, although service from Britain to Canada began in Nov. 1926. This new innovation laid the foundations for a new generation of wireless services, including international short-wave broadcasting, television, facsimile and so forth. It was also superior to cables for international telephone service until it was superseded by a new generation of cables in the mid-1950s. Short-wave beam wireless services were 5 times as fast as the old long-wave technology (250 vs. 50 wpm.) and the concentrated signal made it more reliable, harder to intercept and cheaper to operate. The front-end capital costs of setting up a beam wireless system were also about 10% of those associated with a similar cable network. However, it was still slower than cables (with the Western Union's permalloy trans-Atlantic cables operating at speeds of 1200 words per minute in 1924 and over 2000 in 1930), its operating costs more expensive, less secret, reliable and secure, and it would take a very long time to reach all of the places that the global cable system had managed to get to over the past six decades. Given all of these factors, debates over which of the two media were superior raged for years. One point in this is key: the answers to the debates did not lay in the technology alone, but in how systems, policies and social practices that had been built up in the past adjusted to and managed the introduction of this new technology. Discussion based on Aitken 512; Brown 90–94.

13. The system was carrying 10 million words in 1922–23, up from 3 million before the war.

14. National Archives of Canada (NAC), RG3 Vol. 1001, File 21-5-6. Charles Murphy, Post Master General, to C.D. Skelton, Under Sec. of State for External Affairs, Canada, 7 July 1927.

15. PRO. BT Post 33/1092A, File XXIX. South American Cables – General Papers. Letter, Ralph Paget to Lord Curzon from Embassy in Rio, 8 May 1920.

16. See also PRO. FO 228/3416. Dossier 1120 Telegraphs and Cables, Vol. II. John Denison-Pender (n.d., probably 12 Jan. 1922). Resolution of the Board of Directors of the Western Telegraph Company.

17. PRO. T162/135. GPO Purchase of Cable from US Cable Company and Temporary Lease, After Purchase, to the WU Company. 16 June 1920–23 Nov. 1923.

18. The company consisted of two branches – Cable and Wireless, Ltd (a holding company) and the Imperial and International Communications, Ltd (a communications company). We will use Cable and Wireless for simplicity sake and because over time that was how the new company came to be known after the title was formally adopted in 1936.

19. Based on the tally of acquisitions from United States Report on Communication Companies 3758–77.

20. IT&T was formed in 1920, but the reference to 1918 reflects actions taken by its predecessor in the previous two years en route to its emergence as IT&T.

21. Britain's foremost cable expert at the time, Frank Brown, also also disputed the claim that short-wave would undermine the cable systems. See Brown 137.

22. Britain, Summary of Evidence, 1928, 5th Meeting, 31 Jan. 1928: 18. CWA. Doc/1/I&I.C/1/9/2.

23. The following section, unless otherwise noted, is based on Britain, Cable and Wireless Agreements, 1929. Available at CWA. Doc/1/I&I.C/1/9/2.

24. The point is lamented and ably made by the sympathetic observer of British imperialism, Niall Ferguson, in Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2003), notably chap. 6.

25. PRO. Reuters Contracts, Wardley Memo, 1921; PRO. Reuters Contracts, Memo, 1920. For a somewhat more positive view of Reuters’ position, see Read 173–75.

26. NAC. RG25, Vol. 2371, File S/233/1. League of Nations, The League of Nations and the Press (Geneva: League of Nations (Information Section)), 46–47; also, Press and International Relations Conference (item 14), Cooperation of the Press in the Organization of Peace, no date but contents review period from 1925 to 1933.