Nineteenth-century communication infrastructure was integral to colonial dispossession of indigenous peoples.

Evidence

The telegraph pole, the Christian cross, and the rifle arrived all at once for the Bororo people of Mato Grosso. The rifle of the soldier and the settler served to seize the Bororo’s land in the name of industry and progress, the cross “pacified” and “civilized” them, and the telegraph integrated them into the rest of the newly wired Brazilian republic in the mid-nineteenth century. Some Bororo donned western clothing and moved from communal to single-family dwellings, as the priests told them to do. They learned the settlers’ language and were put to work on the construction of the national telegraph network. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 21

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the book’s core analogy that data infrastructures play the role communication lines once played in settler colonialism — compare with attention/surveillance schools’ treatment of infrastructure. — connects to: Communication technology gave colonial power both practicality and its public self-representation — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 415; Defending indigenous sovereignty helped legitimate colonial dispossession; Instant communication technology transformed colonial rule into imperial control. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 808 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Communication technology gave colonial power both practicality and its public self-representation #corroborates (0.85) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 415
• Colonial conquest coupled physical seizure, cultural conversion, and communication infrastructure together #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 21
• Defending indigenous sovereignty helped legitimate colonial dispossession #corroborates (0.80)
• Instant communication technology transformed colonial rule into imperial control. #expands (0.80) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 808
• Communication infrastructures and racial inequity are co-constitutive across American history #expands (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 1160
• Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 246
• Colonial infrastructure and language prohibition were built to foreclose any future separation #corroborates (0.80)