The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series

Series Editors: Akira Iriye, Professor of History at Harvard University, and Rana Mitter, University Lecturer in Modern History and Chinese Politics at the University of Oxford

This distinguished series seeks to: develop scholarship on the transnational connections of soci-eties and peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; provide a forum in which work on transnational history from different periods, subjects, and regions of the world can be brought together in fruitful connection; and explore the theoretical and methodological links between transnational and other related approaches such as comparative history and world history.

Editorial Board: Thomas Bender, University Professor of the Humanities, Professor of History, and Director of the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University; Jane Carruthers, Professor of History, University of South Africa; Mariano Plotkin, Professor, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, and member of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research, Argentina; Pierre-Yves Saunier, Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France and Visiting Professor at the University of Montreal; Ian Tyrrell, Professor of History, University of New South Wales

Titles include:

Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott (editors)TRANSNATIONAL LIVESBiographies of Global Modernity, 1700–present

Gregor Benton and Edmund Terence GomezTHE CHINESE IN BRITAIN, 1800–PRESENTEconomy, Transnationalism and Identity

Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra (editors)COSMOPOLITAN THOUGHT ZONESSouth Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas

Martin Conway and Kiran Klaus Patel (editors)EUROPEANIZATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURYHistorical Approaches

Joy Damousi, Mariano Ben Plotkin (editors)THE TRANSNATIONAL UNCONSCIOUSEssays in the History of Psychoanalysis and Transnationalism

Jonathan GanttIRISH TERRORISM IN THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY, 1865–1922

Deep Kanta Lahiri ChoudhuryTELEGRAPHIC IMPERIALISMCrisis and Panic in the Indian Empire, c. 1830

Glenda SlugaTHE NATION, PSYCHOLOGY, AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, 1870–1919

Forthcoming:

Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier (editors)COMPETING VISIONS OF WORLD ORDERGlobal Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s

Matthias Middell, Michael Geyer, and Michel EspagneEUROPEAN HISTORY IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD

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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

The cable and wireless imaginationSource: Cable and Wireless map, Cable and Wireless Plc., 1942

Telegraphic ImperialismCrisis and Panic in the Indian Empire,c. 1830

Deep Kanta Lahiri ChoudhuryReader in History, Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan, India

© Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury 2010Foreword © Rana Mitter and Akira Iriye, 2010

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of thispublication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licencepermitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

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First published 2010 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lahiri Choudhury, Deep Kanta, 1971– Telegraphic imperialism: crisis and panic in the Indian Empire,c.1830/Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury. p. cm.—(palgrave Macmillan transnational history series)

1. Telegraph—India. 2. Telegraph—India—History. 3. India—History—British occupation, 1765–1947. 4. Telegraph—Social aspects—India. 5. Social change—India. I. Title. HE8374.L34 2010 384.1095'09034—dc22 2010023837

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 119 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-20506-2

ISBN 978-1-349-30171-3 ISBN 978-0-230-28960-4 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230289604

ToDhriti and Sheila

My Parents

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vii

List of Figures, Maps, and Tables viii

Foreword ix

Acknowledgements xi

List of Abbreviations xii

Introduction: ‘What hath God wrought!’ 1

1 From Laboratory to Museum: The Changing Culture of Science and Experiment in India, c. 1830–56 11

2 The Telegraph and the Uprisings of 1857 31

3 The Discipline of Technology 50

4 Making the Twain Meet: The New Imperialism of Telegraphy 79

5 The Magical Mystery Tour: Cable Telegraphy 105

6 Forging a New India in a Telegraph World: Expansion and Consolidation within India 129

7 The Telegraph General Strike of 1908 157

8 Swadeshi and Information Panic: Functions and Malfunctions of the Information Order, c. 1900–12 179

Conclusion 211

Notes 219

Glossary 257

Bibliography 258

Index 271

Contents

viii

List of Figures, Maps, and Tables

Figures

1.1 Gentlemanly science 10

2.1 Proposed structure of telegraph lines 36

2.2 The telegraph system that was completed in 1856 36

C.1 Horizontal imagination: The telegraph station at Jask 210

C.2 A different architecture: Marconi’s towers 217

Maps

2.1 Uprisings of ‘1857’ and the telegraph lines 30

4.1 The overland routes to India 78

5.1 The Imperial all red line with the British Empire shown in black 104

7.1 A map of the telegraph strike 156

Tables

1.1 Distribution and percentage of private messages sent by Indians from 1 February to 31 July 1855 23

1.2 Breakdown of private messages from May 1856 to April 1857, including numbers sent by Indians until 1857 24

1.3 Regional breakdown of telegrams between November 1856 and January 1857, including those sent by Indians 24

3.1 Breakdown of private telegrams by administrative circle 54

3.2 List of new joint stock companies in Bombay, 1863 58

3.3 Table showing the run on the Bombay stock market in 1863–4 58

8.1 Table showing effects of war on Indian telegraph messages (percentage of decrease) 206

ix

Foreword

If one has to identify one phenomenon above all that subverts the hegemony of the nation state, it is surely technology. In our own era, it is the Internet which is usually summoned up as the clearest example of this tendency, but historical perspective reminds us that there is a story here that long predates the World Wide Web. That is just one of the reasons that the latest monograph in the Palgrave Macmillan Series in Transnational History is so welcome. Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury’s book examines the importance of the telegraph in reshap-ing Britain’s Indian empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We would do well to remember quite how revolutionary the telegraph was when it emerged as a major tool of communication in the mid- nineteenth century. Regions, countries, and empires could all be brought together virtually with a series of dots and dashes that translated into a means of informing, and of course, controlling socie-ties. In examining this major sociocultural phenomenon, the book moves daringly and excitingly between different levels of examination, forcing us to rethink events that we thought we had understood. One of the most powerful elements of this study is the way that it reworks the story of empire, arguing that the technology of telegraphy was not simply transmitted from the imperial metropole but rather that there was important interaction between the Indian empire and Britain, trav-elling in both directions. The wide definition of empire here also shows the power of the transnational approach, allowing the analysis of the connections between different parts of the world which had no physi-cal contiguity. One notable element is the reinterpretation of the First World War as a ‘communications crisis’ in which the non-European world, and the technology that linked it, played a key role. And very importantly, the story told here is not purely one about European elites. We encounter figures such as Kalidas Maitra, author of the first Bengali book on telegraphy in 1855, who was heavily involved in the social reform movements that convulsed Indian society in the late nineteenth century. We also hear stories about subaltern movements from the time of the Uprising of 1857 all the way up to the labour unrest of the early twentieth century. By going down well below the level of nationalist elites, Lahiri Choudhury shows the way that the new technology could reshape politics and society at all levels and link the global and the

local. Finally, one should add that it is a pleasure to publish a book so richly based on archival sources gathered in multiple sites both in India and in the UK. This book will serve for generations as the key argument on the importance of the telegraph in shaping one of the most impor-tant transnational historical actors, the network that was the British empire.

Rana Mitter Akira Iriye

Oxford, August 2010

x Foreword

xi

Acknowledgements

A book owes many friends and accumulates years of debt. I thank Sabyasachi Bhattacharya for encouraging my interest in history of communications. I am grateful to Sir C. A. Bayly for his support and guidance. T. N. Harper, S. Scaffer, Francesca Orsini, Robert Fox, Sylvana Tomaselli, and Sugata Bose have been especially kind in their encour-agement. Mark Harrison has been supportive throughout the years. A number of grants have supported this work and I thank the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, the History Faculty, the University of Cambridge, the managers of the Ellen McArthur, Smuts Memorial, Holland Rose funds, and Charles Wallace Trust, and Hughes Hall. A Junior Research Fellowship in Hughes Hall during my doctor-ate and the Ellen McArthur Prize for the best thesis in social and economic history submitted to Cambridge University in 2002 were great encouragements. I am grateful to the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, and the Modern History Faculty, University of Oxford, for a post-doctoral fellowship. My colleagues and students have been supportive at Jamia Millia Islamia and at Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan. A number of archivists and librarians in more than one country have facilitated this research and I thank them all. Ian Bolton (AVMG), Phil (Hughes), Kevin (CSAS), Ruth Ireland and Michael Strang (Palgrave Macmillan) have been very generous with their time and skills. The Mitters have been very generous with their friendship and hospitality, as have Sunanda Sen, Sita Narasimhan, and Rita and Oliver Gaggs. Without my parents, Dhriti and Sheila, and my wife, Debjani, this book would never have been finished. Friends and mentors have provided support and comfort over the years and there is no way to thank them except to accept the burden, if it is such, of gratitude.

xii

List of Abbreviations

ASL Asiatic Society Library, Calcutta

CSAS Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge

GPO General Post Office Collection, Calcutta

GUL Glasgow University Library, Glasgow

ICE Institute of Civil Engineers, London

MSA Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay

NAI National Archives of India, Delhi

NL National Library, Calcutta

NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

OIOC Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library

SB Special Branch Archives, Calcutta

TCL Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge

WPL Whipple Library, Cambridge