Within a decade after the first public demonstration of telegraph communication in 1844, companies strung lines across eastern North America and Western Europe, connecting the two in 1866. Ten years later, a second set of transatlantic lines connected Europe with Argentina, Brazil, and other parts of South America. By the 1890s some of the largest ships afloat had extended this web of telegraph cables around the world. Jorma Ahvenainen's new book examines one piece of the telegraph network that underlay nineteenth-century globalization.

South America's connection came not via North America but from Europe, driven by expanding world trade in commodities and investments, by the attendant boom in shipping traffic, and by early immigration flows. By 1875 the first lines from Europe to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires had opened, with connections across the Andes to Chile and up the west coast to Peru. By 1882 the west coast lines reached Central America and from there to U.S. financial centers. Until then, all telegraph communication between North and South America passed through London. Not coincidentally, the decades that followed would witness the replacement of European trade and investment with North American dominance through much of the region.

British capital and entrepreneurship dominated the telegraph business through the nineteenth century, although several French, German, and U.S. companies controlled important competing lines by 1914. One of the few firms largely owned by South Americans was the Transandine Company, which operated the land line from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso, thus controlling the key connection between the east and west coasts of South America. Otherwise, the capital, skill, and entrepreneurship came initially from Europe and remained there well into the twentieth century.

Throughout this era, European firms that manufactured cable played large roles in lobbying, promoting, and sometimes financing the cable companies. This is a story that could be told as one of visionary entrepreneurs pushing risky projects to successful conclusion, and in so doing changing the face of international commerce. But it is also one in which political connections, dubious financing, insider deals, and blatant malpractice forged opportunities and sometimes wrecked them. Once laid, difficulties also plagued the new cables, as natural conditions, saboteurs, and shoddy workmanship yielded broken lines and interrupted service.

Those firms that sought the first concessions believed that exclusive rights held the key to financial success and did all they could to wrest such rights from national governments or sought to undermine the efforts of competitors. Only when the terms of the first concessions ended were competing lines established with the blessing of host governments, such as Brazil's, or after aggressive lobbying by governments in North America and Europe. The French and Germans offered particularly strong support for their cable interests. The first of the competing lines was complete by 1882 and over the next three decades telegraph users gained numerous additional options. Mergers between large scale cable providers increased market power in some areas, but overall competition increased. As a consequence, by 1913 telegraph rates on most transatlantic lines had fallen to a fifth or less of their initial levels. By then, the telegraph had long since become the vascular system through which centers of financial, business, and political activity pumped their vital information. Message and response times fell from nearly a month to under an hour, and these flows formed one part of the life-blood for the late-century globalizing boom in commerce, investment, and political power.

This book provides a detailed account of the business negotiations involved in gaining cable concessions from South American and European nations that ultimately enabled laying the South American cables between the 1850s and World War I. The book also offers good coverage of negotiated conflicts between concessionaires, of their business maneuvers and court litigation, and of postinstallation business strategies adopted by the cable companies. All this builds on the author's previous work on international telegraph development, including The Far Eastern Telegraphs: The History of Telegraphic Communication between the Far East, Europe, and America before the First World War (Helsinki: Suoumalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981), History of the Caribbean Telegraphs before the First World War (Helsinki: Suoumalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1996), and Telegraphs, Trade and Policy: The Role of the International Telegraphs in the Years 1870–1914 (In The Emergence of a World Economy 1500–1914. Papers of the IX International Congress of Economic History. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1986). Those looking for more than the detailed narrative presented here will not find it, however. The book does not place the development of the South American lines within a broader historical context, nor does it offer any commentary on the economic impact of the new system. It is neither an economic history nor a history of the telegraph as technology. Nevertheless, Ahvenainen's work should provide an essential reference on the business history of international telegraphy for years to come.