Drawing on extensive research in corporate and government archives, Winseck and Pike illuminate the actions of companies and cartels during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, in many different parts of the globe, including Africa, Asia, and Central and South America as well as Europe and North America. The complex history they relate shows how cable companies exploited or transcended national policies in the creation of the global cable network, how private corporations and government agencies interacted, and how individual reformers fought to eliminate cartels and harmonize the regulation of world communications. In Communication and Empire, the multinational conglomerates, regulations, and the politics of imperialism and anti-imperialism as well as the cries for reform of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth emerge as the obvious forerunners of today’s global media.

Dwayne R. Winseck is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. He is the author of Reconvergence: A Political Economy of Telecommunications in Canada and a coeditor of Democratizing Communication? Comparative Perspectives on Information and Power and Media in Global Context.

Robert M. Pike is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of many articles on the history of communications.