EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Submarine Telegraph Cables: Business and Politics, 1838–1939

Daniel R. Headrick and Pascal Griset

Business History Review, 2001, vol. 75, issue 3, 543-578

Abstract: International telecommunication is not only a business but also a political enterprise, the subject of great-power rivalries. In the late nineteenth century, British firms held a near monopoly, because Britain had more advanced industry, a wealthier capital market, and a merchant marine and colonial empire that provided customers for the new service. After the 1880s, they encountered increasing competition on the North Atlantic from American, German, and French firms. Elsewhere, the British conglomerate Eastern and Associated retained its hegemony until the 1920s. Following World War I, radiotelegraphy threatened the dominance of cables. In the 1930s, cable companies were almost bankrupted by the Depression and by competition from shortwave radio.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:75:y:2001:i:03:p:543-578_07

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business History Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing (csjnls@cambridge.org).

 
Page updated 2024-08-31
Handle: RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:75:y:2001:i:03:p:543-578_07