| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

David Paul Nickles. Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy. (Harvard Historical Studies, number 144.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2003. Pp. 265. $30.95.
In this thoughtful, wide-ranging, and judicious monograph, David Paul Nickles considers the influence of the electric telegraph on the craft of diplomacy. While social historians have long pondered the consequences of new communications media, Nickles joins Paul Kennedy as one of the few diplomatic historians to ask similar questions about the telegraph.	1
Nickles's theme is the integration of the telegraph into diplomatic practice in the period between the laying of the first Anglo-French telegraphic cable in 1851 and the armistice that ended World War I in 1918. He does not explore the relationship between telegraphy and military strategy, or, except obliquely, and often dismissively, the implications of the telegraphic broadcast of news for the formulation of public opinion.	2
Nickles organizes his narrative around case studies of the Anglo-American crisis that culminated in the War of 1812; the Trent Affair that damaged Anglo-American relations during the Civil War; and the publication of the Zimmerman telegram during World War I. Although Nickles devotes much attention to the United States, he is less interested in recasting our understanding of American foreign policy than in helping future policy makers better use whatever communications media are at their disposal. "Technology," he concludes, will play a "major part in shaping the future of the human species" and, indeed, "may determine whether human beings have a future" (p. 195).	. . .

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