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@johntullyVictorianEcologicalDisaster2009

Title: [@johntullyVictorianEcologicalDisaster2009] date: 2023-03-08 type: reference project: Memex2

tags:: Memex2, telegraph, imperialism, agency, exploitation

Reference

John Tully. 2009 A Victorian Ecological Disaster: Imperialism, the Telegraph, and Gutta-Percha. Journal of World History 20(4): 559–579. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.0.0088.

Summary & Key Take Aways

John Tully's article explores the imperialist nature of the telegraph and how its emergence and production was built on imperial standards. Tully discusses the need for faster communication methods in the nineteenth century and the advent of the telegraph. As the telegraph became faster and more reliable, the materials needed to manufacture the cable changed. The new copper wires developed by American Samuel Morse in 1847 required a good insulation material (Tully, 2009, 563). "By a neat coincidence," as Tully words it, a gum substance called "gutta-percha" was found in abundance in the forests of Southeast Asia, where the Dutch, British, and French had colonies, where the substance had been used to strengthen and perpetuate imperial rule (Tully, 2009, 563). The extraction of this gum proved highly ineficient and caused ecological disasters snce they had to extract many large trees just to get a few pounds of gum (Tully, 2009, 572). With the telegraph demand rising, the source became unsustainable and was threatened to be exhausted in as little as a few years in the last decade of the 19th century (Tully, 2009, 574). A sustainable method of extraction was recommended, but imperialist greed persisted (Tully, 2009, 577). The felling of the gutta-percha trees had caused a Victorian ecological disaster that extended to the imperial deforestation of Southeast Asian rainforests (Tully, 2009, 578).

How does it relate to class?

This reading recalls a common theme that has been explicitely mentioned throughout the lectures: Agency. In this case, it talks about imperial agency, and who decides how materials are procurred and manufactures. It shows how the imperial social neccessity of the nineteenth century and the "competences" of the colonies dictated the need to exploit resources outside imperial lands. By connecting the world through telegraph cables, they were also destroying a part of it, but being the inventor of the telegraph "gives" them authority.

The imperialist nature of the internet: Imperialist_internet