Rose, Sebastian ORCID: 0000-0001-6267-640X (2024) The Telegraph from below: race, labour and the Indo-European Telegraph Department 1862–1927. History Workshop Journal:dbae009. ISSN 1363-3554 (Print), 1477-4569 (Online) (doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbae009)

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Abstract

Many historians have understood telegraph networks from above, as an instrumental technology of state building and globalisation. This article proposes a different perspective. Drawing on the labour of subalterns across the Indo-European Telegraph Department (IETD) in Iran, India, and the Persian Gulf in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it focuses on those ‘below’. Reorientating focus to the labour involved in operations, maintenance, and security of the network, the article connects the telegraph to the formation of racial taxonomies and workers resistance. In doing so, the network is revealed as an inescapably hybrid enterprise.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	telegraph; workers; India; subaltern; Iran; Persian Gulf; technology; telecommunication; empire; British Empire; communication; Armenians; Indians; telegraph stations
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain D History General and Old World > DS Asia
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS)
Last Modified:	15 May 2024 13:21
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/47194

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