Cables of Collaboration: How the Telegraph Remade the Imperial Order
Mariana Calvo, a fourth-year PhD candidate in the History Department, is currently pursuing a research project titled “Cables of Collaboration: How the Telegraph Remade the Imperial Order” with the support of the France-Stanford Center Visiting Student Researcher Fellowship. Her dissertation explores France's reliance on British-owned and operated telegraph cables to consolidate its empire in the critical last decades of the 19th century. Her research aims to investigate how France used British telegraph technology and expertise to modernize and administrate its colonies, despite the paradox of relying on another nation's infrastructure in a period of rising nationalism. By accessing original documents in France, including diplomatic correspondence, public and private contracts, and telegraph company communications, Mariana seeks to uncover the complexities of this Franco-British technological partnership. Her work challenges the traditional view of the French Empire as a purely national endeavor, revealing it as a product of transnational collaboration and technological interdependence. In this way, “Cables of Collaboration” contributes to a new understanding of the role of communications technology in shaping modern empires and their colonial and postcolonial identities.