| In the mid-nineteenth century, a handful of tireless hustlers founded telegraphic news agencies in Paris, Berlin, London, and New York. Recognizing the appetite of their troubled times for fast and reliable intelligence, and the possibilities of the latest communications technologies, these colorful and ambitious entrepreneur-adventurers cornered a commodity indispensable to speculators, the budding press, and the centralizing state. They quickly achieved national monopolies over the sources, distribution networks, and clients for rapid information---monopolies which blocked one another from expansion abroad. After years of cut-throat competition and intrigue, the major European news services struck a powerful, secret alliance in 1870: the "Ring Combination." They partitioned the globe into protected spheres of influence for the collection and distribution of the news.;At the same time, the unprofitability of the news business tempted the agencies to turn to governments and financial interests for fast intelligence, telecommunication preferences, and subsidies. In return, chancelleries and financiers enjoyed the suppression of dangerous information, and the distribution of favorable reports to the widest possible domestic and foreign audiences. During times of crisis, however, nationalists and diplomats lamented the national agency's dependence for intelligence on speculative circles and foreign rivals. At the same time, commercial ambitions of the agencies themselves also pressured the frontiers of the cartel's "spheres of influence." Historicizing both "globalization" and the "age of information," the long and dramatic history of the "Ring Combination" affords an escape from the hyperbole about the latest telecommunication revolution---as "new", "clean," "sudden," or a harbinger of peace and understanding. |
