Wired Empire: Telegraph and Techno-Diplomacy in the Caucasus, 1850s–1917


Field: History, History of Technology
Project leader: Ekaterina Rybkina
Starting year: 2025
Project type: Project
Total funding: SEK 3,557,000

The project examines the history of telegraph construction in the Tsarist Caucasus in the 19th century. It particularly focuses on one of the most ambitious engineering projects of its time—the Indo-European Telegraph, implemented by the Siemens Company to connect Britain and India through the Caucasus and Iran. Exploring the processes of construction and maintenance of the transimperial telegraph infrastructure, this study aims to show how political and economic competitors acted as a network in their own right, becoming partners to achieve a common goal while at the same time attempting to benefit the most from the project they were involved in. Besides, the project elucidates the role of the Siemens Company as an imperial intermediary—a go-between mediating and negotiating interests of state actors that otherwise were rivals in the international arena. Wired Empire seeks to better understand large transnational processes of techno-diplomacy in information and communication technology from the local perspective.