What’s the Matter with Networks?

The first chapter takes up the promise of perfect technology and theories of materialism to clarify religion’s role in the establishment of the global telegraph network. Among the primary agents for Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail’s machine were US Protestant missionaries who equated the adoption of new technology with a process of civilization that would lead to religious conversion. For many of these missionaries, especially Cyrus Hamlin, urging the world toward Protestantism entailed also urging the world toward new technology: the medium was the mission. The chapter traces the role of technology in missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the twisting story of telegraphy in the Ottoman Empire—a volatile mix of connection and disconnection as colonial interests, imperial goals, and diverse forms of resistance wove the network through the land and then used the network to take down the empire itself.