Hills, Jill. The Struggle for Control of Global Communication: The Formative Century.

McAnany, Emile G.

Hills, Jill. The Struggle for Control of Global Communication: The Formative Century. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2002. Pp. 327. ISBN 0-252-02757 (hb.) $39.95.

This book is a history of the approximately 100 years between about 1840 and 1940 when the world was being remolded into a global communication system. Jill Hills is concerned about how nation states promoted and regulated the new technologies of the past into serving their own political and economic interests, and she concentrates her attention quite rightly on Britain and the United States as these emerged as the powers of the 19th and 20th centuries that helped create and continue to control this global system. The author provides a good summary to help the reader grasp the conclusion of the book:

 In a worldwide liberalized communication environment,
 separating the interests of individualized
 countries from those of their companies becomes
 difficult--free trade can become the ideological
 vehicle for hiding protectionism, mercantilism,
 and neocolonialism.... Above all, the research
 reported here teaches us that national regulation is
 the bulwark of sovereignty. (p. 292)

How she arrives at this conclusion is a detailed account of how the European powers and the United States developed and regulated the telegraph, marine cables, wireless (radio), film, and international news agencies over the century that helped create the global system that we now operate under.

The book is divided between the U.S. and the UK in chapters that detail developments in periods of about 40 years each. Chapter 1 deals with the period from 1840-1890 and sketches in brief detail the development of the telegraph in both countries. More important for this book, however, was the laying of the marine cables for the telegraph, and the impact on its empire for Britain as it emerged as the dominant force in this vital connecting technology. Not only did one British monopoly company, the Eastern, benefit from this arrangement financially, but London became the center of almost all international communication during the entire century under study. Other important developments during this period were the growth of the three large news agencies of Britain, France, and Germany that took advantage of the rapid communications links, as well as the emergence of an international regulatory body, the International Telegraph Union (forerunner to our current ITU) in the 1860's. One important political effect of marine cables for Britain was to consolidate colonial power in London rather than in the colonies. London also consolidated itself as the financial center of the world economy. Some briefer attention is paid to the U.S. where Western Union emerged as the monopoly on its side of the Atlantic.

Chapter 2 carries on the analysis of cable development within the British Empire from 1890 to 1914 and, how, for the government, political and security considerations were more important than commercial ones whereas the U.S. helped its private commercial interests. In a number of instances, the author traces how marine cables played critical roles in a number of conflicts of the period. As Mills observes concerning the regulatory behavior of the ITU of the period from 1865-1914, it "was still an organization devoted to cartelization, not competition, and was especially concerned with government interests, not those of private companies" (p. 91).

Chapter 3 provides some fascinating detail on the development of radio, called "wireless" because it was seen for many years as the extension of the telegraph. The Marconi companies of both the U.S. and UK played vital roles in the development of radio, first as a means of contacting ships from shore and later as an independent medium for short and long point-to-point communication. In Chapter 4 Hills more succinctly summarizes the activities of the U.S. government in regulating (or not) domestic and later international communication activity. Western Union continued to dominate most domestic and some international telegraph-cable traffic, but AT&T also began to exert its power both domestically and internationally. As a consequence of the growth of these companies and the increasing economic power of the U.S., by 1914 the U.S. had wrested control from Britain for transatlantic cable traffic. Chapter 5 gives an account of how, over the period of the early to mid-19th century until the 1920s, British capital and later technology dominated Latin American countries, despite the Monroe doctrine. After World War I, however, U.S. interests took control of markets for telegraphic communication as well as for the emerging radio and film industries. It is clear from the author's analysis that Latin America remained a largely passive partner to both outside powers.

Chapters 6 and 7 tell the stories of the two countries, the U.S. and Britain, between the wars, 1919-1940. It is a story of both American ascendency and British holding on to its empire through the development of newer technologies for international communication, still primarily through marine cables. It was also during this period that the U.S. and the UK began to regulate the growing medium of radio with very different consequences, a commercial system in the one case and a government controlled, public system in the other. The final substantive chapter deals with the consequences of these two broadcast systems for the two countries as well as for those under their influence (Latin America for the U.S. and colonies for the UK).

A brief summary chapter at the end of the book gives the reader a chance to digest some of the larger ideas that on first reading may have been obscured by some of the abundant historical detail. One conclusion the author emphasizes is the important relation between domestic and international policy and regulation and, of course, the historical ties between government and private communication industries. She is able to draw some compelling lessons from the critical hundred year build-up of the global communication system from 1840 to 1940 and apply them to our current global system. Of note to serious readers is a detailed set of footnotes, an ample but not overwhelming set of references, and an excellent index. It is an example of history that sets the context for our better understanding our current interconnected world.

--Emile G. McAnany

Santa Clara University