A double-edged sword: communications and imperial control in British India

'Großbritannien führte Telegraphen in seine Kolonialreiche ein, um die Kontrolle über seine Untertanen zu festigen. So nutzten die Briten in Indien ihre neuen Telegraphenverbindungen zur Unterdrückung des 'Indian Mutiny' 1857 und beeilten sich anschließend Kabel von England nach Indien und um Afrika herum zu verlegen. Imperialisten rühmten das Aufkommen der Telegraphie als Etablierung dauerhafter Verbindungen zu ihren Kolonien und verglichen sie mit dem römischen Straßen- und Postsystem. Die Telekommunikation hatte jedoch eine andere Auswirkung: sie verbreitete Neuigkeiten aus fernen Orten und hat dadurch den kolonialen Status quo untergraben. Die Nachricht von Japans Sieg über Russland im Jahr 1905 elektrisierte die nationalistische Bewegung in Indien und die Swadeshi Unruhen in Bengalen. Später brachten die Nachrichten über die Aktivitäten von Gandhi und seinen Anhängern Inder aus verschiedenen Regionen auf eine Art und Weise zusammen, wie es Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht möglich gewesen wäre. Folglich erwiesen sich die Hoffnungen, die die Imperialisten in die Kontrollmacht der Telekommunikation setzten, als verfehlt.' (Autorenreferat)'Britain introduced telegraphs in its colonial empires in order to tighten its control over its subjects. Thus, the British in India used their new telegraph lines to repress the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and hastened thereafter to lay cables from England to India and around Africa. Imperialists extolled the advent of telegraphy as establishing permanent ties to their colonies, often comparing these ties to the Roman roads and postal system. Telecommunications had another effect, however, namely it spread the news from distant places, thereby undermining the colonial status quo. News of the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 had a galvanizing effect on the nationalist movement in India and the Swadeshi agitation in Bengal. Later, news of the activities of Gandhi and his followers brought Indians from different regions together in a way that could not have happened in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus the hopes that the imperialists placed in the controlling powers of telecommunication proved to be misplaced.' (author's abstract

Persuasive Rhetoric in Origen’s Contra Celsum.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the philosophical and rhetorical elements of Origen of Alexandria’s Contra Celsum. Herein, one can find to their delight three major themes of ancient argumentation: the argument from antiquity, the moral effect argument, and the argument from prophecy. The bulk of this thesis is the author’s own exegesis of key passages in the Contra Celsum. The major thesis advanced here is that the strategies of rhetoric used by Christian and non-Christian in late antiquity were quite similar, in fact, exactly the same in many cases. The interpretation of key textual passages in the Contra Celsum advanced here is offered as evidence of the alleged similarities in rhetorical strategies

Operator Mixing and the BMN Correspondence

In this note we update the discussion of the BMN correspondence and string interactions in hep-th/0205089 to incorporate the effects of operator mixing. We diagonalize the matrix of two point functions of single and double trace operators, and compute the eigen-operators and their anomalous dimensions to order g_2^2 \lambda'. Surprisingly, operators in different R symmetry multiplets remain degenerate at this order. We also calculate the corresponding energy shifts in string theory, and find a discrepancy with field theory results, indicating possible new effects in light-cone string field theory

The Passing of Print

This paper argues that ephemera is a key instrument of cultural memory, marking the things intended to be forgotten. This important role means that when ephemera survives, whether accidentally or deliberately, it does so despite itself. These survivals, because they evoke all those other objects that have necessarily been forgotten, can be described as uncanny. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first situates ephemera within an uncanny economy of memory and forgetting. The second focuses on ephemera at a particular historical moment, the industrialization of print in the nineteenth century. This section considers the liminal place of newspapers and periodicals in this period, positioned as both provisional media for information as well as objects of record. The third section introduces a new configuration of technologies – scanners, computers, hard disks, monitors, the various connections between them – and considers the conditions under which born-digital ephemera can linger and return. Through this analysis, the paper concludes by considering digital technologies as an apparatus of memory, setting out what is required if we are not to be doubly haunted by the printed ephemera within the digital archive

Estimating the effects of the container revolution on world trade

Many historical accounts have asserted that containerization triggered complementary technological and organizational changes that revolutionized global freight transport. We are the first to suggest an identification strategy for estimating the effects of the container revolution on world trade. Our empirical strategy exploits time and cross-sectional variation in countries’ first adoption of container facilities and combines it with product-level variation in containerizability and container usage. Applying our container variables on a large panel of product level trade flows for the period 1962-1990, our estimates suggest economically large concurrent and cumulative effects of containerization and lend support for the view of containerization being a driver of 20th century economic globalization

British signals intelligence and the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland

Historians for decades have placed Room 40, the First World War British naval signals intelligence organization, at the centre of narratives about the British anticipation of and response to the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. A series of crucial decrypts of telegrams between the German embassy in Washington and Berlin, it has been believed, provided significant advance intelligence about the Rising before it took place. This article upends previous accounts by demonstrating that Room 40 possessed far less advance knowledge about the Rising than has been believed, with most of the supposedly key decrypts not being generated until months after the Rising had taken place

The afterlife of colonial radio in Christian missionary broadcasting of the Philippines

The article explores Christian missionary radio broadcasting as part of a wider sonic colonization of the Philippines under US colonial rule. Specifically, I explore how some post-Second World War faith-based broadcasters shaped the listening practices of Filipino audiences through programming tactics such as blocktiming. Furthermore, I consider how missionary broadcasters cultivated direct relationships with listeners through the imagined ‘shared experiences’ of aural space. As a case study, I explore the activities of the US-based Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC), which began its operations in the Philippines in 1948. Since then, the organization has used the country as a hub for its expanding domestic and international radio network, which now includes broadcasts to South East Asia, China and other parts of the world. In addition to exploring how FEBC’s localized approach to programming has cultivated specific listening audiences, I explore how programmes have been received by listeners in the Philippines, many of whom continue to tune in via terrestrial radio