Communication technology gave colonial power both practicality and its public self-representation

Evidence

The coordinated movement of commands, of soldiers and supplies, of news reports, even of private correspondence, all contributed to Britain’s military effectiveness; it all provided a further instance, in other words, of the effectiveness of the methods of order and discipline I have been examining in the preceding chapters. But such coordination also contributed, no doubt, to the effect of self-certainty. The sudden breakthroughs in developing the technology of communication during the last third of the nineteenth century, which were to culminate in 1895 in Marconi’s successful demonstration of the wireless telegraph, made possible both the continuing penetration of the colonial order and also what might be called its truth. They gave global political power not just its detailed practicality but its facticity. From the tourist spectacles of bombardment and the displays of weaponry to the telegraphed news report and the postcard home, global colonialism came into being not only as a local method of order, seeking to work with individual minds and bodies, but as a process that was continuously reporting, picturing and representing itself. The great exhibitions that I discussed in chapter 1 were only particular highlights of this continuous representational process. Within such a world of representations the general public – that curious body – could be formed and entertained, and a modern political certainty produced. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 415

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that communication technologies give political power not just practicality but ‘facticity’ — that a power’s self-certainty is produced by its self-representation machinery — is a genuinely dense, paradigm-shifting point about how empire could believe its own truth.
• XREF: Builds on the representational process theme from Hartley’s work on the public and on communication technology shaping culture. Also resonates with the soundscape book’s point that communication technology shapes cultural symbols and community. — connects to: Colonial conquest coupled physical seizure, cultural conversion, and communication infrastructure together — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 21; Nineteenth-century communication infrastructure was integral to colonial dispossession of indigenous peoples. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 21
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 415