Communication infrastructure concentrated imperial military power at the battlefront

Evidence

The control of communication brought together all the military resources of the Empire and concentrated them at the scene of the battle. Railways were constructed to carry the forces from one engagement to the next. The telegraph wire and postal service advanced at the same pace, carrying the daily reports of newspaper correspondents – as well as the private letters of soldiers – back to the impatient ‘British public’ on whose behalf the war was fought. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 414

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how military logistics and telegraphy co-evolved — parallels the railroad/telegraph expansion arguments in economics-of-institutions sources like Milgrom on trade institutions, though applied to empire rather than markets. — connects to: Empire expanded through infrastructure that bundled transport with information distribution. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 318