How did 19th century increases in the speed of information effect global economic integration, and what were the local effects of increasing global ties? Others describe how steam technology changed the pace and volume of trade, but, faster than steamship lines or rail lines, telegraph lines spread and connected seemingly remote areas to global networks of information and capital. This paper examines the effects of the telegraph in the Ottoman Empire during the Long Depression of 1873-79. Focusing on famine-stricken Ottoman Anatolia and Iraq in the 1870s, it demonstrates how faster movements of information and credit exacerbated famine conditions and stoked sectarian tensions. By 1865, the Ottoman telegraph network connected the empire’s Asian possessions from Istanbul to Basra. During the military and financial crises that engulfed the Ottomans in the 1870s and 1880s, this network allowed authorities to communicate with and extract taxes from far-flung provinces. When famine struck the Ottoman East in 1879-81, telegraphs also allowed humanitarians to rapidly fund aid activities in the region. During the famine, Armenians and their neighbors benefited greatly from hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid collected by the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate. Kurdish tribes in the region, lacking such global ties, were left to rely on a debt-ridden Ottoman state. Tropes about heartless Christians leaving Kurds to suffer began appearing in the Ottoman press, demonstrating how soaring food prices and rapid capital movements created opportunities to stoke ethno-confessional tensions. By examining the social and economic ramifications of telegraphy in the Ottoman East, this paper goes beyond studies that treat material life and discourse as separate objects of study. Instead, it demonstrates inextricable links between these two allegedly separate spheres, showing how rapid information movements exacerbated deteriorating material conditions and, in turn, how material conditions transformed sectarian politics.

Histories of the Armenian Genocide are full of telegrams. From the initial deportation orders to the instructions for removing the dead, recovered telegrams have helped historians expose the bloodshed and demonstrate the culpability of the Ottoman government. Yet, while there has been much talk about telegrams as evidence of the genocide, there has been very little discussion of the role of the telegraph in expediting the violence, and what such a role might imply about Ottoman modernity. This paper examines the place of the Ottoman telegraph network in the events surrounding the genocide, highlighting the ways in which the technology facilitated the Ottoman state in carrying out a program of violence that was unprecedented in scale and scope. Without minimizing the agency of human actors, it explores the ways in which the form of the technology, and its social practices, set particular temporal and spatial parameters for the catastrophe and gave specific shape to its unfolding. By framing the violence as enabled by technology, this paper connects the genocide to other instances of technological and bureaucratic barbarity in the twentieth century, particularly the Holocaust. In doing so, I argue that the rapid and comprehensive violence of 1915 should be understood not as a primitive blip in the modernization of the Ottoman Empire, but as reflective of the new lethal power and invasive reach of the modern, Ottoman state. However, by using the telegraph as a mechanism to understand the contours of Ottoman modernity, this paper also suggests a more complicated understanding that moves beyond the bleak view of the modern as defined primarily by the rise of omnipotent states that use technologies to dominate populations. By also examining the role of the technology in increasing international awareness of state violence against Armenians during the 1890s, and in the relief efforts both in the 1890s and after the genocide, it demonstrates how the technology also helped to disrupt Ottoman state power. As a result, this paper discusses how the Ottoman telegraph acted both as a tool for a domineering state and a means for those seeking to restore and save Armenian life.

The December 1941 hajj season was marked by the introduction of something new: the live radio broadcasting of letters to Palestinian and Transjordanian pilgrims, from the Palestine Broadcasting Service in Jerusalem to the pilgrims, who were then in Mina. The Arabic section director of this tightly-controlled, multi-language state radio station had persuaded the British Mandate Government both to negotiate with the young Saudi state for broadcast approval, and to air such unambiguously religious broadcasts. In the midst of war, the Mandate authorities delighted at what they considered an opportunity to present British governance in a positive light, to Muslim listeners around the region. Nor were Palestinians opposed: even the Christian-owned Falastin newspaper praised the broadcasts. While starting in Palestine, these broadcasts began a new practice of live, public, mass communications from the hajj that reached a much broader audience – first through radio, and later via television, film, and online media. This paper examines this early history of “outside broadcasting” to and from the hajj. Focusing on Levantine radio stations, it uses government archives to trace the rationale for supporting these broadcasts, along with the process by which permission to broadcast was granted by the Saudi government. It describes the early history of these broadcasts, and examines local and regional press coverage to assess how these broadcasts were perceived, politically and religiously, and how they were received by listeners. It sets radio broadcasts from the hajj in the broader context of other period depictions of the hajj and of Mecca – in the press, in popular culture, and in literature. Finally, it also situates these broadcasts in the broader context of 1930s and 1940s religious broadcasting, including the popular “Bells of Jerusalem” and Bethlehem broadcasts that aired in the United States and elsewhere at Christmas-time. This paper concludes by suggesting that the mid-1900s history of broadcasting from the hajj helps lay the foundation for the later intensification of radio, television, and Internet broadcasts from and of Mecca – whether of pilgrims making tawaf around the Kaaba, or of daily prayers at the Masjid al-Haram. The then-dominant medium of radio, like those that would follow, was put to work to make a critical religious event more visceral for believers, and echoing earlier forms (like paintings or mosaics of the Kaaba and Mecca) and push past them.

In this presentation, I will trace the contentious and celebratory history of almost 100 years of public broadcasting in Afghanistan. From the Great Game to the Cold War to the War on Terror, how have public broadcasting served the interests of a diverse Afghan population, ruling elites, and/or foreign interests? In particular I am interested in the moments that the medium of broadcasting became a platform for talented Afghan musicians and intellectuals to represent and support popular movements, progressive reforms, and social change. In 1923 King Amanullah Khan launched Radio Kabul, the first incarnation of Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), with German and Russian technology. One of the first transmissions to hit the airwaves was a recounting of his victory in the Third Anglo-Afghan War, also known as the War of Independence, thus ending British control. The next decade saw the fledgling new media technology interrupted and stalled as Islamists funded by the British fought to overthrow the monarchy. From the 1950s to the 1970s RTA experienced unprecedented growth as King Zahir Shah funneled vast resources to expand the reach and capabilities of RTA in order to institute his modernization programs. During this “golden era” Radio Television Afghanistan promoted diverse artists and intellectuals from across genders, ethnicities, races, and religions. These early radio and TV pioneers, such as Farida Anwari, Ustad Mahwash, and Dr. Akram Osman who became national icons represented both a challenge to the status quo and were supported by it. In the 1980’s with the Soviet Invasion and War, RTA became a mouthpiece for the Soviet’s and their Afghan supporters. After the Soviet withdrawal and the Civil War, with the rise of the Taliban, RTA become Sharia Radio and banned all artistic and cultural programs with the exception of their own brand of Islamic dictates. Today during the US War of Terror in Afghanistan, RTA is struggling to represent the diverse publics of Afghanistan, while appeasing its foreign funders.