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The European Cable Companies in South America before the First World War. By Jorma Ahvenainen. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2004. 427 pp. Photographs, maps, notes, index. Paper, euro35. ISBN: 9510 -410 -0947-3.
The economic ties of Latin America with the developed world have traditionally evoked extensive discussion and many generalizations but less empirical study. Among the areas least studied have been the submarine cables linking South America to the outside world. This book attempts to fill an important gap in the scholarly literature and follows upon the author's previous Far Eastern Telegraphs (1981) and The History of the Caribbean Telegraphs before the First World War (1996).
The book is divided into three parts. The first, and briefest (pp. i-57), chronicles the earliest proposals and the failed attempts to link South America to Europe by submarine cables prior to 1872. The second, and longest (pp. 59-244), covers the period from 1872 to 1899, when private companies laid most of the cables linking South America to Europe and to the United States. In 1874 British companies made Brazil the first South American country to have a submarine cable connection with Europe. The next year, the Brazil cable reached Buenos Aires, a city that the Transandine Telegraph Company had connected by land cable to Valparaíso, Chile, in 1872. In 1876 a submarine cable linked Valparaiso to Lima, Peru. A direct cable to the United States reached Lima only in 1882. The third part (pp. 245-387) covers both the laying of additional submarine cables and the struggle to break the monopoly of the British companies before World War I.
Because even the most basic...