94 | Mass Media and Historical Change
States, and was organised on the principles of private enterprise. The work
of Winseck and Pike counters this with the argument that only 20 per cent
of the network lay in the hands of the state, and therefore political interests
could only partially circumvent economic ones (Winseck and Pike 2007:
226).
More importantly, telegraphy was unquestionably used as an instrument of
military control. Hence the expansion of the telegraph line from Great Britain
to India came as an immediate reaction to the Sepoy Uprising of 1857/58, as
a means of expediting the deployment of troops in case of unrest. This was the
reason why the Chinese resisted telegraph cables, whereupon the cable compa-
nies laid them surreptitiously and then with cunning and a good deal of diplo-
matic pressure confronted the Chinese with a fait accompli after 1870 (Baark
1997: 87). Here again, the Boxer Rebellion gave impetus to an expansion of
the cable system as a safeguard of Western influence (Winseck and Pike 2007:
140). Yet at the same time the telegraphic stream of information in colonial
regions promoted intra-national communication, patriotic sentiments on the
part of the natives and subsequent movements towards independence – par-
ticularly in India (ibid.: 343f.; on China: Baark 1997: 194). Furthermore,
telegraphy changed the role of diplomacy in general. As David Paul Nickles
has argued, telegraphy reduced the power of foreign diplomats and opened
up new possibilities for negotiations between governments, which could help
to avoid the escalation of conflicts – like the possible entry of Britain into the
American Civil War (Nickles 2003).
The effects of telegraphy on society can be traced in many other areas.
They are most evident in the financial sphere. Prior to the advent of telegra-
phy, regular trans-border communication using carrier pigeons had expedited
the flow of information between the big stock exchanges. Now the telegraph
accelerated the emergence of a global economy by interlinking the exchanges
and facilitating trans-border contracts. By the same token it strengthened the
concentration of business in particular exchanges. While the stock markets in
New York, Boston and Philadelphia had been of roughly similar size during
the 1840s, the dominance of Wall Street grew with the introduction of the
telegraph (Baark 1997: 53). As early as the 1860s the first tickers clicked
out stock prices on tickertape. This networking of the markets of course also
heightened the vulnerability of the global market. Thus the first world finan-
cial crisis occurred in 1857, shortly after the introduction of telegraphy, and it
would be well to examine more closely the extent to which this speedy com-
munication triggered panicky chain reactions following the failed speculation
of an American bank.
Moreover, telegraphy transformed the inherent content of communication
and the press. This was true not only because of the increasingly rapid availabil-
ity of the latest news. Media experts argue that telegraphic transmission caused