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Imperial needs

tags:: Memex2, needs, exploitation, imperialism, agency

The telegraph connected Imperial Europe and North America, but in doing so, caused harm to other parts in the world. As an imperialist society, they conveniently exhausted the natural resources of their colonies to manufacture the telegraph cables. Ironically, as John Tully stated in A Victorian Ecological Disaster: Imperialism, the Telegraph, and Gutta-Percha, "it is a further sad irony that the telegraph industry destroyed the very trees that made its existence possible" (Tully, 2009, 579). There was of course also agency in the decision of where to get the insulated resource from. The connection of the telegraph was meant for the West, so what if they were aggressively exhausting Gutta Percha trees in Southeast Asia? The control they had over colonies allowed them to do so without consequences. Southeast Asia's trees were even further hunted later for lumber, continuing the satiation of imperialist needs.

Citational Information

@johntullyVictorianEcologicalDisaster2009

The emergence of the internet is highly imperialist, and thus was based on imperial needs: Imperialist_internet

Imperialist needs calls for power and control: Control