Technology and Culture

Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920–1939 By Simon J. Potter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp xii + 242.

Between the two world wars, a unique kind of internationalism existed among radio users. There was a general sense that the new medium of radio had the capacity to link nations and individuals, speak across borders, and increase international understanding. It could also, in this way, be a force for culture and education. Moreover, listeners benefited from a wide range of programs, many originating in faraway countries, so that the practice of listening was in-herently international. In order to regulate the new medium, the interwar period also saw the creation of an array of laws, agreements, and international organizations, which required sustained cooperation between nations and radio providers. Anchored in law and custom, this "wireless internationalism" (WI) is the topic of the latest book by Simon J. Potter, professor of history at Bristol University.

Paradoxically, Potter's study looks through a decidedly British lens: while the international nature of radio as a medium provides a constant thread, the focus is really on how the BBC contributed to and was influenced by WI, how foreign listeners experienced BBC broadcasts, and how British listeners lived WI as a listening practice.

The national focus on an international phenomenon is somewhat contradictory, but also offers certain advantages. It allows Potter to show how the majority of radio listeners in Britain in the 1920s, 30s, and even 40s listened to international as well as domestic broadcasts. The international propagation of radio signals, individual taste, and the relative lack of popular domestic program content combined to make nearly all listening international during this period, certainly in Great Britain and continental Europe.

The book does real service in demonstrating how WI was a lived practice in the listening habits of ordinary listeners. Potter gives a very good picture of the larger European radio ecosystem. This is also one of the few books about radio that pays close attention to the experiences of ordinary listeners, using a combination of letters received by the BBC, and a close reading of what featured in the magazines and periodicals produced for radio listeners and hobbyists. The book is also very alive to the progression of radio technology during this period, which rapidly changed the experience of WI and long-distance listening, though technology is certainly not a foreground concern. In both of these areas, awareness of modern 'sound studies' allows Potter to emphasize not only what was broadcast, but also what was heard, and to foreground the experience of listening. The final [End Page 947] chapter is of particular interest, for it takes on the relatively understudied topics of gender and race, both as expressed within BBC policy and programming, and as factors that influenced radio listening (ch. 7).

Potter demonstrates the very real influence of WI ideas on the BBC's programming and philosophy and their persistence into wartime. Yet, at the same time, Potter makes clear that WI's hold on broadcast practice all over the world weakened dramatically as fascism spread and the world began to slide into war in the late 1930s. The fascist countries, with Germany and Italy at their head, increasingly used international radio broadcasts to spread propaganda, a fact to which the BBC saw itself forced to reply.

Potter breaks with a great deal of earlier scholarship about the BBC in the interwar period. Using both BBC and government sources, he demonstrates quite clearly that, for all its high-mindedness and supposed independence, the BBC and its leadership were pragmatic and flexible in their dealings with the British government. Indeed, they were often quite willing to spread a pro-British message, particularly in the "Empire Service" and its broadcasts to the (still very colonial) world outside Europe. Potter shows that British government and particularly...