Technology and Culture

180 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE than those in the industrialized world. Therefore, the leading man­ ufacturers in each industrial sector cooperated to establish monopo­ lies and oligopolies, dividing up the markets. Prices tended to be high, and profits sufficed but hardly abounded, says Haber. Permanently unable to compete on international markets, the domestic industrial­ ists kept pressing the government to continue tariff protections. Having its own reasons for industrial self-sufficiency (i.e., economic nationalism and labor concessions), the government before and after the Revolution acquiesced to its inefficient manufacturers. Mexican industry had ossified by the 1940s. It did not make enough profit to warrant reinvestment in the latest technology available. Nor did Mexican industry produce its own technology. Haber’s is a perceptive book, although the author occasionally attributes too much agency to his subject. Where he asserts that “the path of industrialization that Mexico has followed over the last century has in large part determined the development of the nation’s polity and society” (p. 8), a critic might actually reverse the cause and effect. The Porfirian state in the 1890s had promoted economic modernization because the industrialized world was passing Mexico by. Mexican elites and politicians feared for their positions if the United States overwhelmed Mexico or if a weakened Mexican polity came apart. Therefore, they sought capitalist economic development. Mexicans sought industrialization, although the latter did not turn into the dynamic, self-sustaining, competitive capitalism for which they had yearned. This is precisely the position in which Mexico now finds itself. Mexican elites and politicians once again are attempting economic reform. Haber’s book will aid the economist and political scientist in understanding where this renewed effort might lead. Jonathan C. Brown Dr. Brown teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and InternationalPolitics, 1851 — 1945. By Daniel R. Headrick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 289; figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $32.50. In the preface to this thoughtful work, Daniel Headrick presumes that complex modern technology promotes interdependence among nations. Specifically, technologically advanced countries increasingly come to depend on other countries for materials, goods, and services. The modern technology of telecommunications provides the princi­ pal medium for allowing the flow of information which makes this interdependence workable. Paradoxically, Headrick states, political considerations have twisted the use of telecommunications systems so TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 181 that peoples are alienated from each other rather than brought together. He offers to provide an understanding of this paradox. In truth, he has already provided an explanation for his “paradox” in proposing that people are frightened by interdependence. If such be true, then it is hardly surprising that nations should manipulate communications technology to limit the binding effects. The book nicely documents how this has occurred over a century-long period, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries; at the same time it shows how control of these telecommunications highways inexorably shifted from Great Britain to the United States. The narrative provides a wealth of well-documented information about the growth of the British submarine cable network—beginning with a successful line to France in 1851 (following an unsuccessful attempt in 1850), India in 1865, the United States in 1866, China in 1870, and Australia in 1871. By 1900 over 339,000 kilometers of cable existed, 63 percent British. The arrival of submarine cables stimu­ lated construction of land lines: 84,700 kilometers in India by 1900, 11,951 kilometers in Indochina by 1902. Government policies led to subsidies: £8,100 per year for a Halifax-Bermuda cable in 1889, followed by £8,000 annually for an extension to Jamaica in 1896, and£10,000 toward a cable from Zanzibar to the Seychelles and Mauritius in 1893. Additional data are presented to illustrate the development of an integrated, worldwide network that responded to commercial and political needs. The British lead (all by private enterprise in the 19th century) was decisive. Toward the end of the century, France and Germany responded by subsidizing cables to Africa and across the Atlantic. But it was too little and too late. Furthermore, Britain had another critical advantage: control of the sea. So...