Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- Frontispiece
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Preface to Volume II
- Part VII Rethinking the Pacific
- Part VIII Approaches, Sources, and Subaltern Histories of the Modern Pacific
- Part IX Culture Contact and the Impact of Pre-colonial European Influences
- Part X The Colonial Era in the Pacific
- 49 Political Developments in the Pacific Islands in the Nineteenth Century ce
- 50 Timorese Islanders and the Portuguese Empire in the Indonesian Archipelago
- 51 Pacific Bodies and Personal Space Redefined, 1850–1960
- 52 The Pacific in the Age of Steam, Undersea Cables, and Wireless Telegraphy, 1860–1930
- 53 Latin America’s Pacific Ambitions, 1571–2022
- Part XI The Pacific Century?
- Part XII Pacific Futures
- References to Volume II
- Index
52 - The Pacific in the Age of Steam, Undersea Cables, and Wireless Telegraphy, 1860–1930
from Part X - The Colonial Era in the Pacific
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2022
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- Frontispiece
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Preface to Volume II
- Part VII Rethinking the Pacific
- Part VIII Approaches, Sources, and Subaltern Histories of the Modern Pacific
- Part IX Culture Contact and the Impact of Pre-colonial European Influences
- Part X The Colonial Era in the Pacific
- 49 Political Developments in the Pacific Islands in the Nineteenth Century ce
- 50 Timorese Islanders and the Portuguese Empire in the Indonesian Archipelago
- 51 Pacific Bodies and Personal Space Redefined, 1850–1960
- 52 The Pacific in the Age of Steam, Undersea Cables, and Wireless Telegraphy, 1860–1930
- 53 Latin America’s Pacific Ambitions, 1571–2022
- Part XI The Pacific Century?
- Part XII Pacific Futures
- References to Volume II
- Index
Summary
At the heart of this chapter lies a set of interdependent technologies whose development and application had remarkable global resonance and reach. Steamships, undersea cables, and wireless telegraphy rose to prominence during an era of heightened imperial expansion and rivalry from the second half of the nineteenth century. These industrial technologies of transport and communications that developed in distant metropoles are generally argued to have ‘globalized’ the Pacific, hooking this vast ocean into worldwide circuits of exchange. Yet it was only with the advent of a Pacific world networked through steam and electricity that such circuits were in effect global for the first time. The world’s largest ocean was fundamental to any such claims of world-spanning, earth-girding effects.
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- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean , pp. 514 - 538Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023