Nexus

"Jonathan brought a different perspective to his dissertation: he was interested in how things work. Most historians focus on what people do, but people wouldn’t be able to do much – at least in the modern era – had things not worked. So how did they? All of us knew, for example, that the telegraph had been invented in the 1840s and the first successful transatlantic cable had been laid in the 1860s. By the end of the 19th century, telegraphic cable communications extended throughout the world – the great European empires could hardly have been managed without them. How often, though, do histories of the period discuss this global network of cables, or the early systems of radio communications that were just beginning to supersede them? That was the context for Jonathan’s dissertation, and his recently published book on American strategic communications during World War I. At the time the war broke out, in 1914, the British largely controlled the global cable network. Like the modern internet, it had been open to just about anyone in peacetime – wartime, though, was a different matter. The British cut German cable communications, and intercepted the cable traffic of other countries. This significantly affected the US, which did not enter the war until 1917. So it confronted what we today might regard as a form of cyber warfare. Dealing with it became a major preoccupation, not just of the American military, but also of American banks and businesses attempting to conduct international activities. We’ve long known that one German message the British intercepted – an offer to Mexico to return its ‘lost provinces’ of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California if it entered the war on the German side – played a major role in bringing about Wilson’s decision for war in April, 1917. What we haven’t known, though, is how the whole system of international cables worked during that war. This was a major concern of American strategic planners at the time. It’s strange, therefore, that until Jonathan got to work on it, historians had almost completely neglected that issue. There’s often a mismatch between contemporary concerns and historical accounts. Jonathan’s achievement – a major one, I think – has been to reconnect them."