Fog in Channel: Continent cut off
Book Review: Heyday - The 1850s and the Dawn of the Global Age, by Ben Wilson
Awkwardly, there's a howler in the map at the opening of the book, which places Bahrain on the Red Sea rather than the Gulf, but fortunately this does not reflect the overall quality of the work. Ben Wilson begins by describing the laying of the cross-channel telegraph cable and the Great Exhibition of 1851, an opportunity for Britain and the Empire to show its wares, but which also became an opportunity to discover developments and innovations of other powers. The book was written in 2016, and it's difficult not to read it with the parallels of Brexit running through the self-delusion of inherent British superiority. (At least in 1851 there was a good case for it being British, rather than English).
The action quickly moves across the world, to the gold rushes in Australia and California, the first attempt at an Atlantic telegraph line, westward expansion of the United States, and the development of the cotton trade. Here we start to see the darker side to the bonanza, the hints of the bust that will follow the boom. The middle section of the book discusses corruption in central America, Russian expansion and the Crimean war, the breaking of isolation from the West in Japan and China, and the Indian Mutiny. Wilson does his best to be even-handed in analysing the grim events of the time. Moving into the final section, the use of the telegraph for both military and civilian news-bearing purposes gives the innovators the advantage, but also unleashes populism in the papers of the day. There's a good explanation of the origins of the US Civil War, and of Britain's ambivalence towards it between moral and commercial imperatives. An epilogue shows how the boom ended, with financial crashes and the Long Depression, but retaining the technological improvements that had emerged in the era.
Awkwardly, there's a howler in the map at the opening of the book, which places Bahrain on the Red Sea rather than the Gulf, but fortunately this does not reflect the overall quality of the work. Ben Wilson begins by describing the laying of the cross-channel telegraph cable and the Great Exhibition of 1851, an opportunity for Britain and the Empire to show its wares, but which also became an opportunity to discover developments and innovations of other powers. The book was written in 2016, and it's difficult not to read it with the parallels of Brexit running through the self-delusion of inherent British superiority. (At least in 1851 there was a good case for it being British, rather than English).
The action quickly moves across the world, to the gold rushes in Australia and California, the first attempt at an Atlantic telegraph line, westward expansion of the United States, and the development of the cotton trade. Here we start to see the darker side to the bonanza, the hints of the bust that will follow the boom. The middle section of the book discusses corruption in central America, Russian expansion and the Crimean war, the breaking of isolation from the West in Japan and China, and the Indian Mutiny. Wilson does his best to be even-handed in analysing the grim events of the time. Moving into the final section, the use of the telegraph for both military and civilian news-bearing purposes gives the innovators the advantage, but also unleashes populism in the papers of the day. There's a good explanation of the origins of the US Civil War, and of Britain's ambivalence towards it between moral and commercial imperatives. An epilogue shows how the boom ended, with financial crashes and the Long Depression, but retaining the technological improvements that had emerged in the era.