The Wireless World Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting 1St Edition Simon J Potter All Chapter

The Wireless World: Global Histories Of
International Radio Broadcasting 1st

Edition Simon J. Potter
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-wireless-world-global-histories-of-international-ra
dio-broadcasting-1st-edition-simon-j-potter/
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 17/6/2022, SPi
The Wireless World

The Wireless World

Global Histories of International
Radio Broadcasting
SIMON J. POTTER, DAVID CLAYTON, FRIEDERIKE

KIND-KOVÁCS, VINCENT KUITENBROUWER,
NELSON RIBEIRO, REBECCA SCALES,
AND ANDREA L. STANTON
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,

United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© The various authors 2022
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022934364
ISBN 978–0–19–286498–7
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864987.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Preface
This book deepens and revises our understanding of global histories of inter-
national broadcasting. It explores the idea of a ‘wireless world’, a globe connected,
both in imagination and reality, by radio. It examines the extent and limitations of
these transnational connections, how their nature and impact varied from place to
place, and how they changed over time. It seeks to bring together more traditional
accounts, which focus on states and broadcasting organizations and often take the
form of institutional and international histories, with new approaches that draw
inspiration from the history of technology, media history, cultural history, global
and transnational history, and the study of soundscapes.
The book has been co-written to allow coverage of a wide range of key themes
and significant case studies: the authors have shared their expertise and access to
original primary source material with one another. The chapters examine broad-
casters and listeners in different countries and cover the entire twentieth century,
while also keeping an eye on the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and
on the future of international broadcasting. The book is the product of five years
of collaboration. By working together, the authors have sought to transcend the
conceptual, linguistic, and archival boundaries which have, perhaps paradoxically,
rendered many previous histories of international broadcasting essentially
national in focus.
Each of the main chapters that follow draws on material from different coun-
tries and decades, to address seven key themes in the history of international
broadcasting. Each main chapter is accompanied by two case studies, which are
intended to widen the geographical and chronological scope of analysis still
further. While much ‘global history’ is often in effect the history of the
Anglophone world writ large, this book seeks to offer a more encompassing
approach to writing the history of our increasingly interconnected world, while
recognizing that a great deal of foundational research is yet to be completed.
Our collaboration was made possible by the generous support of the
Leverhulme Trust. As recipients of an International Networking Grant (IN-
2015-044 Connecting the Wireless World: Writing Global Radio History) the
authors benefited from opportunities to meet regularly, formulate a new agenda
for research in the field, discuss our ideas with other scholars of international
broadcasting, and work together to produce this book. This collaboration gave us
access to an unparalleled range of sources and historiographies, in many languages
and relating to many different broadcasters, states, programmes, and audiences.
We are hugely grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for making this possible.
vi 
References in this volume to the history of broadcasting in the Portuguese

empire are based on written and audio sources collected with the support of the
project ‘Broadcasting in the Empire: Nationalism, Colonialism, Identity’
(PTDC/COM-CSS/29610/2017) funded by the Portuguese Foundation for
Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Union via the Portugal 2020
programme.
We would also like to thank all those who participated in our network events
and immeasurably enriched our understanding of the subject: Isabel Huacuja
Alonso; Christina Baade; Alec Badenoch; Peter Bajomi-Lazar; Carolyn Birdsall;
James R. Brennan; Alejandra Bronfman; Kay Chadwick; Morgan Corriou; Gergely
Gosztonyi; István Hegedüs; the late A. Ross Johnson; Michael Krysko; Jessie
Labov; Stephen Lovell; Arturo Marzano; Robert Parnica; István Rév; Linda
Risso; Jean Seaton; Stephanie Seul; Derek Vaillant; Hans-Ulrich Wagner; Stuart
Ward; and Alban Webb.
A huge debt of gratitude is owed to Laura Lanceley and Barbara Caddick, who
worked tirelessly as the project’s network facilitators and made everything
possible.
SJP
Backwell, North Somerset
February 2022
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acronyms and Abbreviations xi
About the Authors xiii
1. Out of the Ether: The Wireless World and New Histories
of International Radio Broadcasting 1
Simon J. Potter
2. Technologies of International Radio Broadcasting 33
David Clayton
Case Study 2.1 Radio Amateurs and ‘DX-ing’ between the
World Wars 53
Rebecca Scales
Case Study 2.2 ‘Towers of Prestige’: Dutch Transmitters and
Public Relations 62
Vincent Kuitenbrouwer
3. Institutions, States, and International Broadcasting 70
Nelson Ribeiro
Case Study 3.1 British Colonial Broadcasting in the 1940s 93
David Clayton
Case Study 3.2 Media (and) Revolution: Western Broadcasting
in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 98
Friederike Kind-Kovács
4. Radio Wars: Histories of Cross-Border Radio Propaganda 104
Case Study 4.1 Interwar Radio Propaganda for Arabic-speaking
Listeners 123
Andrea L. Stanton
Case Study 4.2 News, Propaganda, and British and American
International Broadcasting during the Second World War 128
Simon J. Potter
5. Broadcasting as Internationalism 134
Case Study 5.1 International Broadcasting for a Pluri-Continental
Nation? Portuguese Colonial Broadcasting 154
Nelson Ribeiro
viii 
Case Study 5.2 The Song of the Trojan Horse: Radio Luxembourg
and Allied Propaganda at the End of the Second World War 160
Simon J. Potter
6. Programmes, Soft Power, and Public Diplomacy 167
Simon J. Potter
Case Study 6.1 Dramatic and Literary Programming on the
BBC Arabic Service 188
Andrea L. Stanton
Case Study 6.2 ‘Is Everybody Happy?’: Eddy Startz’s Happy Station 194
7. Tuning-in to the World: International Broadcasting and its
Audiences 201
Rebecca Scales
Case Study 7.1 Listening to the BBC in Neutral Portugal during
the Second World War 224
Nelson Ribeiro
Case Study 7.2 Who (Else) is Listening? RIAS in the Early
Cold War 230
8. The Soundscapes of the Wireless World 235
Andrea L. Stanton
Case Study 8.1 Costes and Bellonte’s Transatlantic Flight:
Tuning-in to a Global Radio Event 250
Rebecca Scales
Case Study 8.2 Jammed Soundscapes in Eastern Europe,
c. 1948–1959 258
David Clayton
9. Afterword: The Wireless World in the Age of Wi-Fi 266
Timeline of Key Dates 277

Further Reading 281
Index 287
List of Illustrations
1. Front cover, BBC Portuguese Service promotional brochure, 1941,

author’s own collection. 6
2. Advertisement for Belling & Lee components, 1961, author’s own collection. 7
3. Amateur short-wave radio operator, South Australia, c. 1921, State Library
of South Australia, B 47585/34. 10
4. Front cover, Philips Radio Station Chart for Australian listeners, c. mid-1930s,
Federation University Australia Historical Collection, 03650. 17
5. Northern Rhodesia Information Service publicity photograph, c. 1948,
6. QSL card from E. H. Stephan, Cape Town, South Africa, United Nations
Archives, Geneva, League of Nations Information Section, Registry Files,
Information, Publicity for Radio Nations, R5195. 58
7. QSL card from Norman Wehrli, Kilgore, TX, United Nations Archives,
Geneva, League of Nations Information Section, Registry Files, Information,
Publicity for Radio Nations, R5196. 58
8. Radio Nederland QSL Card, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision,
Hilversum, Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep Collection, BA 00097. 65
9. Radio Nederland QSL Card including Bonaire Relay, Netherlands Institute
for Sound and Vision, Hilversum, Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep
Collection, BA 00097. 67
10. Radio Free Europe relay station, Salvaterra de Magos, Portugal, n.d.,
Mário Novais, Art Library Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. 84
11. Radio Nations transmitter and aerials, United Nations Archives, Geneva,
League of Nations Photograph Collection, LN287-292 Radio Nations, R06. 139
12. QSL Card for Azores Regional Station, Emissora Nacional, 1958,
13. BBC Portuguese Service staff (possibly in the correspondence section),
BBC Portuguese Service promotional brochure, 1941, author’s own collection. 225
Acronyms and Abbreviations
ABSIE American Broadcasting Station in Europe

ANC African National Congress, South Africa
AOS Oliveira Salazar Archive, National Archives Torre do Tombo, Lisbon
ARRL American Radio Relay League
AT&T American Telephone and Telegraph
BArch. Bundesarchiv, Koblenz
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation (before 1927, British Broadcasting
Company)
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System, USA
GDR German Democratic Republic
GPO General Post Office, UK
HILA Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University
HJFRT Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television
HKPRO Hong Kong Public Records Office
IBU International Broadcasting Union
ITU International Telecommunication Union
LC London Calling
NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland
NAS BBC North American Service
NBC National Broadcasting Company, USA
NISV Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Hilversum
OSA Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, Central European
University, Budapest
OWI Office of War Information, USA
PBS Palestine Broadcasting Service
PCA Philips Company Archives, Eindhoven
PHOHI Philips Omroep Holland Indië
PWE Political Warfare Executive, UK
RCA Radio Corporation of America
RCM Radio Clube de Mozambique
RCP Rádio Clube Português
RFE Radio Free Europe
RFI Radio France Internationale
RIAS Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Radio in the American Sector),
West Germany
RL Radio Liberty
RNW Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)
RRG Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, Germany
RS Radio Supplement
xii   
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

StAL Stadtarchiv Leipzig
UKNA United Kingdom National Archives, Kew
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
USIA United States Information Agency
VOA Voice of America
WAC BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading
W-R World-Radio
About the Authors
Simon J. Potter is Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol. He has

published widely on media history and imperial history, with books including News and
the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876–1922 (Oxford, 2003);
Broadcasting Empire: The BBC and the British World, 1922–1970 (Oxford, 2012); and
Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of
Global Radio, 1920–39 (Oxford, 2020). He has also published a centenary history of the BBC,
This Is the BBC: Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain, 1922–2022 (Oxford, 2022).
David Clayton is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of York, UK. He has
written on the economic history of the British empire in the twentieth century, with a
particular focus on Hong Kong. His work on radio broadcasting has been published in the
Economic History Review (2004) and the European Review of Economic History (2012), and
he is currently writing on British colonial broadcasting from 1930 to 1960, focusing on the
building of infrastructures and the uptake of radio receiving sets.
Friederike Kind-Kovács is Senior Researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute for

Totalitarianism Research at TU Dresden and Lecturer at Regensburg University. She is
the author of Budapest’s Children: Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War
(Bloomington, IND, 2022) and Written Here, Published There: How Underground
Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain (Budapest and New York, 2014), which won the
University of Southern California Book Prize in Cultural and Literary Studies for 2015.
She has co-edited two volumes: From the Midwife’s Bag to the Patient’s File: Public Health in
Eastern Europe (Budapest and New York, 2017) and Samizdat, Tamizdat and Beyond:
Transnational Media during and after Socialism (New York, 2013). Most recently she has
guest edited a double special issue of the Journal of Modern European History on Childhood
in Times of Political Transformation (2021).
Vincent Kuitenbrouwer is Senior Lecturer in the History of International Relations at the

University of Amsterdam. He specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperial
history and has a special interest in colonial media networks. He is currently working on
Dutch international radio broadcasting in the late colonial period and the era of decolon-
ization. Recent publications include ‘Radio as a Tool of Empire. Intercontinental
Broadcasting from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s and 1930s’,
Itinerario, 40/1 (2016), 83–103 and ‘ “From Heart to Heart”: Colonial Radio and the Dutch
Imagined Community in the 1920s’ in G. Blok et al. (eds), Imagining Communities:
Historical Reflections on the Process of Community Formation (Amsterdam, 2018), 113–31.
Nelson Ribeiro is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the Universidade
Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon. His research focuses on media history, and particularly
on international broadcasting from the interwar period until the end of the Cold War.
He is currently Principal Investigator in the project ‘Broadcasting to the Portuguese
xiv   
Empire: Nationalism, Colonialism, Identity’, and Chair of the History Section of the
International Association for Media and Communication Research. His most recent co-
edited books are Media and the Dissemination of Fear: Pandemics, Wars and Political
Intimidation (Cham, 2022) and Digital Roots: Historicizing Media and Communication
Concepts of the Digital Age (Berlin, 2021).
Rebecca Scales is Associate Professor of History at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

She is the author of Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France (Cambridge, 2016),
which examines how the airwaves became a new space for political engagement during the
decades between the two world wars, transforming the act of listening into an important, if
highly contested practice of citizenship. Her research on the cultural politics of broadcast-
ing has appeared in French Historical Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History,
Media History, and French Politics, Culture, and Society. With Alejandra Bronfman and
Andrea Stanton, she is a co-director of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer
Seminar for College and University Faculty entitled ‘Radio and Decolonization: Bringing
Sound into Twentieth-Century History’.
Andrea L. Stanton is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Interim Director of the
Korbel Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver. Her research focuses on
interwar and mid-century Arabic-language radio broadcasting. She has published widely on
the Palestine Broadcasting Service, as well as on the BBC’s Arabic Service and on the
Egyptian State Broadcasting Service. She has received grants from the American Academy
of Religion, the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and the US Institute of Peace.
1
Out of the Ether
The Wireless World and New Histories of
International Radio Broadcasting
Simon J. Potter
For early ‘distant listeners’, picking up international broadcasts from far-off radio
stations often seemed like an adventure, a courageous voyage to another land. In
September 1928, J. D. Strange, writing as ‘Yodeller’, described how ‘glowing
accounts of the wonders which can be accomplished on the ultra-short waves’
had finally tempted him to succumb ‘to the lure of short-wave work’.¹ Over the
previous decade, radio broadcasting, or ‘wireless’ as it was then generally called,
had developed rapidly across Europe, North America, and other relatively pros-
perous parts of the world. In these places, radio stations and networks increasingly
sought to appeal to local and national identities in order to attract an audience and
to encourage listeners to feel a connection with the services that they provided.
Yet, from the very earliest days of broadcasting, transmissions had also crossed
borders, promising to act as an international means of mass communication and
forging connections among widely separated places and people. Wireless thus
appealed not just to local and national identities, but also to a sense of
cosmopolitanism.
Wireless enthusiasts like Strange were, by 1928, already accustomed to tuning-
in far-away stations broadcasting on medium and long waves. Distant listeners
took pride in picking up signals transmitted from other countries, hundreds of
miles away, and often attempted to ‘bag’ as many stations as possible. They
relished the technical challenge, and sometimes, if they could understand them,
also enjoyed the programmes that they picked up from stations in other countries.
Medium- and long-wave broadcasts could even cross oceans, and the most
dedicated ‘distance killers’ were willing to stay up into the early hours of the
morning in their search for transatlantic signals. Yet medium- and long-wave
transmissions only travelled such exceptional distances when conditions
approached perfection. Short-wave broadcasting offered a potentially more sig-
nificant means for overcoming the tyranny of distance. During the 1920s, it
¹ ‘Yodeller’, ‘Short Wave Work in the Alps’, World-Radio (henceforth W-R), 28 Sept. 1928.
The Wireless World: Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting. Simon J. Potter, David Clayton,
Friederike Kind-Kovács, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, Nelson Ribeiro, Rebecca Scales, and Andrea L. Stanton,
Oxford University Press. © Simon J. Potter, David Clayton, Friederike Kind-Kovács, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, Nelson Ribeiro,
Rebecca Scales, and Andrea L. Stanton 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864987.003.0001
2   
became clear that short-wave radio signals could traverse the globe and be picked
up thousands of miles away from the original point of transmission. However, the
science of short wave—the fact that signals bounced repeatedly between the earth
and the upper atmosphere, allowing them to travel vast distances—and the
practical art of short-wave transmission and reception were still not fully under-
stood. Listeners needed skill, patience, and special receiving equipment to tune-in
short-wave stations. Even if they possessed all these things, mastery of this
mysterious medium could still not be guaranteed.²
In describing his first attempts to seek out short-wave signals, Strange (an
Englishman living in Switzerland, hence ‘Yodeller’) evoked both the sense of
wonder that picking up stations broadcasting hundreds or thousands of miles
away could create, and the challenges involved in attempting this feat.
For a moment nothing happened, then came a [M]orse station, and I knew that
the set must be functioning correctly. Carefully working the S.M. dial down-
wards, I suddenly paused . . . in the distance came the faint sound of music –
surely it was an English dance orchestra – and, tuning in more carefully, I was
just in time to hear, ‘by the B.B.C. Dance Orchestra,’ in the old, familiar tones,
and I knew that I had arrived at [the BBC’s experimental short-wave station at]
Chelmsford. The transmission was coming through at splendid strength and,
with the note magnifier connected up, worked the loud-speaker faintly. I was, of
course, delighted with this immediate success, the only drawback at the moment
being that every time I put my face too near the horizontal panel the whole thing
squealed vigorously.
After carrying out an on-the-spot upgrade of his receiver to eliminate the

unwanted noise, Strange ‘embarked on a voyage of discovery in the S[hort].
W[ave]. sea’. He tuned in ‘a tremendously powerful station, doing gramophone
records’: slowly and clearly the announcer intoned the call sign ‘Allo-allo-P-C-J-J,’
and then stated in German, French, Dutch, English, and Spanish that he was
calling from the Dutch short-wave station at Hilversum. Strange then picked up
stations broadcasting from Berlin, Rome, Vienna, and Paris, all received ‘at quite
respectable strength’. Subsequent listening sessions brought in Pittsburgh and
Schenectady in the US, and then Melbourne, Australia. Although broadcasting
from the other side of the world, the latter came in ‘almost as loud’ as the British
station at Chelmsford, until ‘very rapid fading began and eventually it disappeared
altogether’.³
² Simon J. Potter, Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the
Invention of Global Radio, 1920–1939 (Oxford, 2020), 41–7.
³ ‘Yodeller’, ‘Short Wave Work in the Alps’.
    3
Strange’s metaphor—a voyage of discovery on a short-wave sea—evoked an

older way of thinking about radio, the idea of the ‘ether’ or ‘aether’. Since Newton,
scientists had speculated that electromagnetic energy, including light and radio
waves, was propagated through the ether, an undetectable, all-pervasive medium,
much as water carried waves of kinetic energy and air carried sound waves. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, Einstein’s work had suggested that there was
in fact no theoretical necessity for the existence of such a medium. However, it
took time for many scientists to abandon the idea of the ether, and radio engineers
proved even more reluctant to let go: indeed, during the 1920s and 1930s, the
popularization of wireless technology helped keep the concept of the ether alive.⁴
This was, at least in part, because of the appeal of thinking about the new medium
of radio in limitless, mystical, and almost supernatural terms. Early wireless
experimenters could present themselves as voyagers in a strange realm, exploring
its qualities and possibilities and using it to travel the world without physically
moving. For some, such thinking shaded into a belief that the ether could even be
used for psychical purposes, facilitating telepathy or telekinesis, or allowing the
living to contact the dead. The latter was an especially beguiling possibility at a
time when, in the wake of the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic,
so many families had been left bereaved. The British physicist and inventor
Sir Oliver Lodge, a pioneer and popularizer of the science of electromagnetism
and radio waves, continued to promote the idea of the ether well into the interwar
period, notably in his books Talks about Wireless and Ether and Reality (both
published in 1925). He described the ether as ‘the home of spiritual existence, the
realm of the awe-inspiring and the supernal . . . the universal connecting link; the
transmitter of every kind of force’.⁵ Lodge had lost his own son in the war: a
committed spiritualist, he believed that the ether could form a channel of com-
munication with the deceased.⁶
More prosaically, many early wireless enthusiasts imagined themselves as
inhabitants of the ether, a vast realm linking them with radio stations, and with
other amateur experimenters, all around the world. Commercial radio manufac-
turers sought to profit from this conceit, marketing receiving sets with the promise
that they would allow the consumer to ‘master the ether’. World-Radio, a maga-
zine published by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) especially for
distant listeners, included a ‘Viâ Ether’ column each week, written by
⁴ Jaume Navarro, ‘Ether and Wireless: An Old Medium into New Media’, Historical Studies in the
Natural Sciences, 46/4 (Sept. 2016), 460–89.
⁵ Oliver Lodge, Ether and Reality: A Series of Discourses on the Many Functions of the Ether of Space
(Cambridge, 2012 [1925]), 173–4.
⁶ Peter Rowlands, ‘Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851–1940), physicist’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography (Oxford, 2011), https://doi-org.bris.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/34583, accessed 25 Jan.
2022. Courtenay Grean Raia, ‘From Ether Theory to Ether Theology: Oliver Lodge and the Physics of
Immorality’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 43/1 (winter 2007), 19–43. Oliver Lodge,
foreword to Geraldine Cummins, The Road to Immortality (London, 1933).
4   
‘Etherviator’ (this was, after all, also the heroic age of the aviator) and containing
information about transmissions from stations around the world. Crucially, the
ether seemed to be a realm in which the national political and cultural differences
of the physical world became almost irrelevant, and might be overcome entirely.
As one contemporary put it, ‘fraternising in the ether is the beginning of inter-
national under-standing and world-alliance’.⁷
We might draw a parallel between all this and the ideas about the creation of an
infinite, untrammelled, ‘cyberspace’ that developed at the end of the twentieth
century, in the early stages of the digital revolution. The ether and cyberspace were
both products of a ‘futurist ethos’ that identified new forms of electric media with
coming utopias, in which faster, fuller, and more readily accessible forms of
communication would in turn create more perfect societies.⁸ There were also
echoes of earlier thinking about the transformative and unifying effects of the late-
Victorian global network of telegraph lines that bound together continents, and
undersea cables that crossed the ocean floor. As Rudyard Kipling put it, in what
was probably one of the few poems to be inspired by the latter, ‘Hush! Men talk
to-day o’er the waste of the ultimate slime, And a new Word runs between:
whispering, “Let us be one!” ’⁹ A key and recurring element in this ‘rhetoric of
the electrical sublime’, applied to telegraphy, radio broadcasting, and later to the
Internet, was the idea that such communication might bring the world together in
peaceful union.¹⁰
Yet the moment of the electrical sublime has always proved fleeting. By the time
Strange was writing, the sense that the ether was a vast, untrammelled realm in
which global harmony could readily be cultivated had already begun to seem
outdated, even naïve. Concerns about the number and power of broadcasting
stations in operation, and how they were starting to clash with one another, had
already led some to doubt that the ether really had limitless capacity. As the BBC’s
chief engineer wrote in 1925, ‘Continental stations had been springing up like
mushrooms in the night, and it was not long before the overburdened ether began
to squeak as two stations unknowingly rubbed shoulders, to their mutual discom-
fort.’¹¹ The following year, the rapid proliferation of radio stations in Europe was
cited as a reason to introduce binding international agreements on wavelength
allocations, sharing out among the nations the finite frequencies available for
broadcasting. The ‘freedom of the ether’ could not be ‘the unassailable right of
⁷ ‘The Virtue of the Foreign Programmes’, W-R, 12 Feb. 1932.

⁸ James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (New York and London,
1989), 114. Although in the works of science-fiction authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson,
cyberspace also became closely associated with dystopian views of the future.
⁹ Rudyard Kipling, The Deep-Sea Cables (1896), https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_
cables.htm, accessed 26 Jan. 2022.
¹⁰ Carey, Communication as Culture, 133.
¹¹ Peter Eckersley, ‘ “S.B. to Europe” – Paving the Way’, Radio Supplement (henceforth RS),
24 July 1925.
    5
every station’: this would end in a chaotic free-for-all, in which nobody would be
able to listen to anything. Instead, it had to be regarded ‘as the high privilege of all
authorised transmitters operating within their prescribed limits’.¹² Stricter regu-
lation was required.
Subsequently, international wavelength allocation agreements temporarily
reduced interference between different stations. However, these frameworks had
to be continually revised as more, and more powerful, transmitters were built. In
1931, in World-Radio, the secretary-general of the International Broadcasting
Union (a body set up largely to devise and implement wavelength allocation
agreements) dismissed the idea of an imminent ‘war in the ether’, waged using
the powerful new transmitters being built by rival European powers, as ‘sensa-
tional’.¹³ However, a year later, another writer in the same magazine emphasized
the danger posed by the aggressive use of broadcasting in Europe, the ‘attempts on
every side to poison the ether with national propaganda against that of the
others’.¹⁴
Rather than deploy the relatively short-lived interwar imagery of the ether, the
chapters that follow encourage us to think in terms of a ‘wireless world’. This was
an idea that recurred repeatedly in contemporary thinking about international
broadcasting across the twentieth century, in many different countries. It often
manifested itself in mundane form in the names given to radio magazines
(including one of the premier British journals for wireless enthusiasts, The
Wireless World) and radio receiving sets, and in the images used by wireless
manufacturers and broadcasters to promote their wares or their services (see
Figures 1 and 2).
In adopting the idea of a wireless world, the authors of this book have sought to
avoid the simplistic vision of radio as a straightforward and benign globalizing
force that is often associated with the utopian rhetoric of the electrical sublime.
Instead of thinking in terms of an untrammelled, unstructured, and otherworldly
ether, historians need to explore how human agency created a wireless world that
came to reflect and propagate many of the imperfections and limitation of the
physical world. The wireless world was, we argue in this book, shaped by institu-
tions, power, hierarchies, inequalities, and, perhaps most importantly, by the
presence of nation-states, national languages, national cultures, and empires.
Crucially, the wireless world quickly became a densely populated and thickly
entangled space, whose inhabitants competed and cooperated with, and emulated,
one another.
In exploring the idea of an entangled wireless world, historians of international
broadcasting can draw on a rich body of work on ‘connected history’ or ‘histoire
¹² ‘Geneva Must Be Supported’, RS, 15 Jan. 1926.

¹³ A. R. Burrows, ‘The Progress of Broadcasting – III – The International Aspect’, W-R, 1 May 1931.
¹⁴ ‘Broadcasting and Propaganda’, W-R, 29 July 1932.
6   
Figure 1 Front cover, BBC Portuguese Service promotional brochure, 1941, author’s
own collection.
croisée’.¹⁵ This, in turn, has developed out of a wider field of global history, which
has emphasized the importance of uneven, multi-directional flows of people,
goods, money, and ideas in shaping and transforming the modern world.¹⁶ Such
work has demonstrated that the history of transnational connectivity should not
be viewed as a simple story of benign and progressive globalization. Rather,
transnational connections reflected and often compounded existing global
inequalities, and frequently produced new forms of hierarchy. In terms of the
¹⁵ Eliga H. Gould, ‘Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English Speaking Atlantic as a
Spanish Periphery’, American Historical Review, 112/3 (June 2007), 764–86; Timothy Snyder,
Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London, 2011); Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar
Marinov (eds), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, vol. 1, National Ideologies and Language Policies
(Leiden, 2013); Klas-Göran Karlsson, Johan Stenfeldt, and Ulf Zander (eds), Perspectives on the
Entangled History of Communism and Nazism: A Comnaz Analysis (Lanham, 2015); Simo Mikkonen
and Pia Koivunen (eds), Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe (New York and
Oxford: Berghahn, 2015); and Simon J. Potter and Jonathan Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History
and Connected Histories of Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 16/1 (Apr. 2015),
n.p.. For a critique of this approach see Mark Mazower, ‘Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands’, Contemporary
European History, 21/2 (2012), 117–23.
¹⁶ The literature is vast: for an introduction, see Maxine Berg (ed.), Writing the History of the Global:
Challenges for the Twenty-First Century (Oxford, 2013).
    7
Figure 2 Advertisement for Belling & Lee components, 1961, author’s own collection.
wireless world, this is most apparent in the way that entangled international
broadcasting initiatives reflected wider national and imperial policies of cultural
projection and propaganda, and were used to exert power in the global arena.
Because not all states had access to equivalent resources, and not all listeners
8   
enjoyed the same level of freedom to participate in the wireless world, inequality
must be a central theme in any history of international broadcasting.
Historians have already begun to write transnational, entangled histories of
broadcasting.¹⁷ The chapters that follow seek to distil, advance, and further
develop this emerging agenda. They also introduce new perspectives from
media history more generally, and from the history of technology, cultural history,
and the study of soundscapes. The aim is to broaden our understanding of the
history of international broadcasting and to make the topic relevant to a wider
academic audience. This involves building on the insights of older studies, which
focused on the institutional histories of broadcasting organizations and on the
relationships between those organizations and the national and imperial govern-
ments that often funded them and sought to influence their activities. It is crucial
that we understand and continue to explore the role of states and their geopolitical
agendas in shaping and directing the nature of international broadcasting services.
However, we also need to move beyond purely institutional and political histories.
The cultural impact of international broadcasting, across the twentieth century,
was enormous. Yet it remains poorly understood. Historians of the wireless world
need to pay more attention to programmes, listeners, and soundscapes. We need
to open our ears to the voices, music, and other noises that were carried by
wireless, over vast distances, and to seek to understand how people made distant
listening part of their everyday lives.
In rethinking the history of the wireless world, the chapters that follow also
attempt to overcome the barrier to understanding posed by the traditional peri-
odization of the subject. Too often, scholars have examined specific eras or
decades, or even shorter periods, in isolation from their wider chronological
context. Notably, international broadcasting during the Second World War has
generally been treated as a topic in and of itself. Perhaps more damagingly,
international radio during the Cold War has been examined in isolation and
largely from the perspective of Cold War international history, making few
connections with wider themes in media or cultural history. This book thus
seeks to revise existing scholarship by placing the last hundred years of inter-
national broadcasting within a single analytic frame. This has involved exploring
the 1920s and 1930s in more detail than is usual: only recently have these decades
attracted significant scrutiny from historians, and this new work is showing just
¹⁷ See Michele Hilmes, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American
Broadcasting (London, 2012); Alexander Badenoch, Andreas Fickers, and Christian Henrich-Franke
(eds), Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War (Baden-Baden, 2013);
Christoph Classen (ed.), Transnational Broadcasting in Europe 1945–1990 (Frankfurt am Main, 2016);
Derek W. Vaillant, Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of
Radio (Urbana, IL, 2017); Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert, ‘Entangled Media Histories’, Media
History, 23/1 (2017), 130–41; Michele Hilmes, ‘Entangled Media Histories: A Response’, Media History,
23/1 (2017), 142–4; and Golo Föllmer and Alexander Badenoch (eds), Transnationalizing Radio
Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium (Bielefeld, 2018).
    9
how important the foundations established in this period were for subsequent
developments. It has also involved factoring the history of decolonization more
centrally into our understanding of the wireless world, further complicating our
understanding of the Cold War era. Historians also need to make more of an effort
to explore the history of international broadcasting after 1989, and especially the
impact on the wireless world of the fall of communist regimes in the USSR and
Eastern and Central Europe. Looking at how international broadcasters, their
sponsors, and their listeners adapted to these profound geopolitical transform-
ations, and to the simultaneous dawning of a new digital age, will help us further
revise our understanding of key continuities and changes over the twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries.
Creating the Wireless World
During the 1890s, more or less simultaneously, scientists in a number of different

countries conducted experiments with radio waves, using them to send signals
over increasingly long distances. Initially, radio was seen as a means of point-to-
point communication, conveying simple messages from one transmitter to a
single receiver using Morse code dots and dashes. This practice was known as
wireless telegraphy. During the early twentieth century it began to replace the old
Victorian system of wired telegraph and cable networks, and to play a particularly
important role in facilitating maritime and ship-to-shore communication.
Point-to-point wireless telegraphy continued to develop after the First World
War as new long-range stations were constructed, generally using high-power
long-wave transmitters. However, at the same time, amateur experimenters began
to realize that short-wave frequencies could also be used to carry signals over very
long distances. Previously, few had thought that wavelengths below 200m had
much practical utility, but amateurs proved that short-wave signals could in fact
cross the North American continent. In December 1921, when a test broadcast
coordinated by the American Radio Relay League from New Jersey was picked up
in Scotland and several other parts of the UK, experimenters also conclusively
demonstrated that short waves could traverse the Atlantic. Crucially, short-wave
transmitters required much less power to operate than did their long-wave
equivalents. The British wireless telegraph station at Rugby consumed as much
power as a small town. In contrast, the transmitter used in the 1921 short-wave
experiment operated at a power rating of 50w, roughly the same as a lightbulb.¹⁸
Two-way short-wave communication was soon established across the Atlantic,
and in 1924 the first exchange of messages between Britain and New Zealand took
¹⁸ ‘The Story of the Transatlantics’, QST, Feb. 1922.

10   
place when Cecil Goyder, a pupil at Mill Hill School, North London (and a future
chief engineer at All India Radio), made radio contact with Frank Bell, a farmer
living in rural Otago.¹⁹ Ordinary people could, it seemed, use short wave to travel
vast distances through the ether, with relatively inexpensive equipment (see
Figure 3).
While these long-distance wireless telegraphy experiments were being con-
ducted, regular and increasingly professional local and national wireless broad-
casting services were also being established. Whereas wireless telegraphy was a
point-to-point form of communication, wireless broadcasting was one-to-many.
Contemporaries were quick to perceive the potential of broadcasting as a form of
global mass communication. In part, this potential stemmed from the seemingly
limitless nature of the ether. Radio signals could, it appeared, overcome all
physical and man-made barriers and exert a universal reach. Moreover, unlike
other technologies of mass communication, ‘consumption’ by those receiving
radio signals did not exhaust ‘supply’. All those within range of the transmitter
who possessed a suitable receiver were able to enjoy access. Whereas newspapers,
magazines, or books needed to be printed in increased quantities to reach larger
Figure 3 Amateur short-wave radio operator, South Australia, c. 1921, State Library of
South Australia, B 47585/34.
¹⁹ Hocken Library, Dunedin, New Zealand, Brenda Bell papers, MS-0470/12 and MS-0470/13.
    11
audiences, with radio broadcasting the supply available to be picked up remained

undiminished, no matter how many listened. Scarcity did not appear to be
an issue.
In the earliest days of radio, amateur and experimental broadcasters paid little
attention to national borders. They simply sent out signals to be picked up by
whoever wanted to listen, wherever they might be. Early wireless enthusiasts in the
UK, for example, were just as likely to listen to a Dutch or French station as to a
British one. Indeed, they were obliged to do so, as the experimental broadcasting
stations of this period generally operated only for an hour or two each week. As
broadcasting became established and institutionalized during the 1920s, stations
proliferated, broadcast programmes daily, and became more explicit in targeting
local or national audiences. Nevertheless, their transmissions continued to reach
listeners far beyond their intended service areas. On Europe’s initially uncrowded
airwaves, when atmospheric conditions were right, and especially at night,
medium-wave signals could travel very far indeed. Early BBC broadcasts were
picked up as far away as the Arctic and South Africa.²⁰ Similarly, broadcasts from
US stations were picked up across North, Central, and South America, and
reportedly as far away as Cape Town in South Africa and Hobart, Australia.²¹
Although unusual, these were not freak occurrences: extreme feats of distant
listening were possible under favourable conditions, and ‘bagging’ far-off stations
became an obsession for some wireless enthusiasts. Dedicated hobbyists in the UK
stayed up into the small hours to tune-in low-power US stations, and American
‘DX-ers’ sought out elusive European transmitters and discussed their triumphs
and defeats with fellow distance-killers (see Case Study 2.1).
From the later 1920s onwards, national broadcasters built ever more powerful
medium- and long-wave transmitters, attempting to reach all possible listeners
within ‘their’ national borders (see Chapter 2). ‘Interference’ between high-power
transmitters located in different countries operating on the same frequencies
created problems for some listeners. However, when international wavelength
allocation plans worked, distant listeners could enjoy improved access to and
clearer signals from a wide range of foreign stations. The BBC’s Daventry long-
wave station became popular among listeners across Europe and beyond (it was
later replaced by an even more powerful transmitter at Droitwich), as did the
Deutsche Welle transmitter at Königs Wusterhausen, near Berlin.²²
Those in other countries who listened to such stations were generally con-
sidered to be ‘eavesdroppers’, picking up programmes that were not intended
for them. However, during the 1920s some broadcasters began explicitly to
²⁰ Potter, Wireless Internationalism, 21–5.

²¹ Shaheed Nick Mohammed, Global Radio: From Shortwave to Streaming (Lanham, MD, 2019),
23–4.
²² Potter, Wireless Internationalism, 19–49.
12   
target foreign listeners. Some of this work was done through ‘exchanges’ and
‘relays’, as broadcasters cooperated with their counterparts in other countries and
‘rebroadcast’ one another’s programmes using their own transmitters. Within
Europe, exchange programmes were relayed among stations and across national
borders using medium- and long-wave transmitters or, as new infrastructure was
built, high-quality landline networks. Short-wave wireless ‘beam’ transmitters
were used to achieve relays over longer distances, notably across the Atlantic.
Recorded programmes, known as ‘transcriptions’, were also shared or sold inter-
nationally. Transcriptions, distributed on gramophone discs and, later, magnetic
tape, offered a means to exchange non-topical material without using expensive
and unreliable long-range transmitters, and could be broadcast locally on access-
ible wavelengths at high fidelity.²³
Increasingly, some broadcasters also began to provide regular, scheduled long-
range services aimed at ‘direct’ listeners in other countries. Sometimes the motives
behind such initiatives were commercial. Radio Luxembourg offered the best
example of a station set up to make money by broadcasting across borders. It
was established in anticipation of a ban on commercial broadcasting in France: a
powerful transmitter located in Luxembourg would be able to reach listeners in
key French markets, circumventing government restrictions. However, once
Radio Luxembourg began broadcasting in 1933, British listeners quickly became
its most important audience, as British advertisers employed the station’s services
to circumvent the BBC’s non-commercial monopoly of broadcasting in the UK
(see Chapter 3 and Case Study 4.2). Meanwhile, some other international stations
were operated by companies which hoped to use them to generate indirect profits.
In the Netherlands, for example, the electronics company Philips established
station PCJ to stimulate overseas sales of its radio receiving equipment (see Case
Study 2.2). Yet the commercial possibilities of international broadcasting had their
limits. Notably, although US stations were early adopters of short-wave technol-
ogy, they could not make transatlantic radio services profitable. In what was still
only a semi-globalized world economy, it remained difficult to sell consumer
goods, and thus advertising time, in distant markets.
International broadcasting was given a further boost by wider ideologies of
internationalism. The idea that the nations of the world could be brought together
in mutual peace and cooperation through conscious international political, cul-
tural, and economic initiatives arguably reached its apogee during the interwar
years, as a reaction to the horrors of the First World War. Many internationalists
hoped that the new medium of radio, with its vast potential as a means of
transnational mass communication, would promote a sense of mutual under-
standing among the nations, spreading knowledge and appreciation of different
²³ Ibid.
    13
national cultures and perspectives on world affairs. The League of Nations’ own
broadcasting station, Radio Nations, was in many ways the clearest embodiment
of this ideal, although the station’s failings also reflected the wider limitations of
interwar wireless internationalism (see Chapter 5).²⁴
Religion provided another stimulus to international broadcasting. Widely
regarded as the ‘father’ of radio broadcasting, the British-based Italian inventor
Guglielmo Marconi also played a key role in the establishment of Radio Vatican.
Operated by the Society of Jesus and funded by the Vatican, the Italian fascist
state, and US private donors, the station was launched formally in 1931 as a global
voice for the Catholic Church. It broadcast in an increasingly wide range of
languages, to reach the devout and spread the faith around the wireless world.²⁵
The Nation-State in the Wireless World
While radio sometimes appeared to be a limitless medium, in reality international

broadcasting depended on the expenditure of scarce and finite resources, on an
increasingly lavish scale. Whereas international broadcasting had initially been
possible using relatively rudimentary equipment, as broadcasters competed with
and emulated one another, increasingly sophisticated and expensive operations
became the norm. Broadcasters built more and more stations, each equipped with
a growing number of transmitters, and each requiring eventual replacement when
they were rendered obsolete by technological advances and intensifying inter-
national competition. Each new generation of transmitters required an even
greater amount of electrical power to operate. Investment in stations was used
as a public demonstration of national prestige, cultural appeal, and modernity,
often involving the construction of enormous buildings set on vast plots of land
and equipped with extensive aerial arrays (see Case Study 2.2). As international
broadcasting efforts became more sophisticated, they involved complex news and
programme production operations to make suitable content for transmission.
This involved the deployment of significant amounts of costly human labour.
By 1934, the German short-wave station at Zeesen employed a staff of up to forty
people, including eight announcers, broadcasting in German, English, Spanish,
and Portuguese.²⁶
During the 1930s the rising cost of international broadcasting was driven, and
generally covered, by states. While commercial, internationalist, and religious
incentives for international broadcasting all certainly remained significant, it
²⁴ For more on all these themes see Potter, Wireless Internationalism.

²⁵ Mohammed, Global Radio, 59–61. Marc Raboy, Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World
(Oxford, 2016). Marilyn J. Matelski, Vatican Radio: Propagation by the Airwaves (New York, 1995).
²⁶ Cecil Graves, ‘Report on Visit to Germany: August 20-25, 1934’, BBC Written Archives Centre,
Caversham Park, Reading, E1/744.
14   
was generally governments that encouraged or directed broadcasters to reach

foreign audiences and that ultimately picked up the bill. They were willing to
pay because they saw wireless as a crucial medium for communicating informa-
tion and propaganda and for national cultural projection. Even in countries where
domestic broadcasting was largely left to private enterprise, states sought to
influence or control international broadcasting to serve their foreign policy
goals. Governments provided vital subsidies in various overt and covert forms.
The USSR was one of the first states to recognize the international uses of
broadcasting. This was unsurprising: it had also pioneered domestic wireless
telegraphy and broadcasting as a means to advance and consolidate the
Bolshevik revolution. Moreover, the USSR was in theory at least committed to
furthering the global spread of communism, and radio offered a means to support
revolution in other countries.²⁷ Soviet experimentation with international broad-
casting dated back to the early 1920s, and Radio Moscow, operating by the
Comintern, began targeting international listeners with a regular long-wave ser-
vice in a range of languages from 1929.²⁸ Other European governments, con-
cerned about the spread of communism, responded with alarm. Soon,
broadcasters, government bodies, and international organizations began to dis-
cuss the problem of international broadcast propaganda, and whether agreements
could be reached to limit or ban it.
Such anxieties were sharpened by the operations of a growing number of
powerful ‘frontier’ stations, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, designed
to broadcast cultural and political propaganda across national borders. After the
First World War, peace treaties had redrawn the map of the region, leaving
linguistic minorities trapped in ‘foreign’ states, and creating contested regions
where resentments simmered and periodically boiled over. The border territory of
Silesia provided one such focus for tension, in this case between Germany and
Poland. Here, the German station at Breslau threatened to strengthen and sustain
nationalist animosities by addressing German minorities living in the territory
and, indeed, across Central and Eastern Europe. Polish Radio retaliated using its
own powerful frontier station at Raszyn, which was opened in 1930.²⁹
Tensions were also marked along the border between Germany and France. In
1930 the French opened a high-power station at Strasbourg, to compete with
German stations at Stuttgart and Freiburg for the attention of German-speakers in
French-controlled Alsace. The Strasbourg station also reached across the border
²⁷ Stephen Lovell, Russia in the Microphone Age: A History of Soviet Radio, 1919–1970 (Oxford,
2015).
²⁸ Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War
(Syracuse, NY, 1997), 1–3.
²⁹ Carolyn Birdsall and Joanna Walewska-Choptiany, ‘Reconstructing Media Culture:
Transnational Perspectives on Radio in Silesia, 1924–1948’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television (henceforth HJFRT), 39/3 (2019), 439–78.
    15
into Germany, and the German authorities responded by significantly upgrading

the power of their Stuttgart transmitter. Competition between French and
German stations was further stimulated by the desire of both sides to control
the contested Saarland, and Nazi cross-border radio propaganda intensified
significantly in the build up to the Saar plebiscite of 1934. At the same time, and
in a similar fashion, exiled Austrian Nazis broadcast from a station in Munich into
Austria, attempting to destabilize the government there. Contemporary observers
believed that these broadcasts were linked to the failed Vienna putsch of 1934,
during which the Austrian chancellor was assassinated and the Austrian national
broadcaster temporarily seized.³⁰
Powerful medium- and long-wave frontier stations also operated along the
borders that separated Czechoslovakia from Germany and Poland, and France
from Italy. The International Broadcasting Union and the League of Nations
sought to broker international agreements that would ban aggressive cross-border
propaganda broadcasts, but to little avail (see Chapter 5). Indeed, during the mid-
1930s a new generation of even more powerful, ‘regional’ stations came into
existence. These stations sought to target several countries at once, broadcasting
in a range of foreign languages. Italy’s medium-wave Radio Bari, inaugurated in
1933, was probably the most famous, and most significant, example. Broadcasting
across the Mediterranean and into the Middle East, in the wake of the Italian
invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 it began to play a key role as a propaganda weapon
for Mussolini’s regime. In particular, its Arabic-language service sought to foment
unrest in British and French colonial and neo-colonial territories across the
region, so as to weaken the two powers and prevent them from intervening in
support of Abyssinia. In response, the British government used the powerful
transmitters of the Egyptian State Broadcasting Service (then still amenable to
British influence) as a regional station to reach Arabic-speaking listeners across
the Middle East, and funded a new BBC short-wave Arabic Service, transmitted
from Daventry in England (see Case Study 4.2).³¹
Daventry was an example of a ‘global’ station, operating on short wave and
providing a complement or alternative to frontier and regional stations, capable of
reaching far-flung audiences around the world. Short-wave international broad-
casting was adopted by those wishing to pursue a wide range of international
agendas, including the USSR, the Vatican, and the League of Nations. Crucially, it
was taken up by imperial powers, including the Netherlands, Britain, France, and
Portugal, to bind together their globe-spanning empires (see Chapters 3 and 4).
During the 1930s, the number of global stations in operation proliferated, and
³⁰ Maude Williams, ‘War is in the Air: Networks of Enemy Radio Broadcasting in France and
Germany During the Phoney War (1939–1940)’, HJFRT, 39/3 (2019), 602–17. Potter, Wireless
Internationalism, 78–9, 84–5.
³¹ Potter, Wireless Internationalism, 79.
16   
specialist magazines and tuning and programme guides developed to cater to the
needs of short-wave listeners (see Figure 4).
Much of this work was inspired by an early recognition of the possibilities
offered by radio as a means of ‘public diplomacy’ or ‘soft power’ (see Chapter 6),
aimed at cementing links with expatriates and securing the loyalty of colonial
subjects by deploying the cultural resources of the imperial centre. This was
certainly the explicit motivation for the foundation of the BBC Empire Service
in 1932, broadcast from Daventry and targeting a global audience of British
colonial expatriates and a wider British diaspora, notable in Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, and South Africa. However, the BBC Empire Service clearly also
played a wider role as a tool of cultural diplomacy, offering a prototype world
service. Broadcasting in English, which was already becoming a global language,
the Empire Service could be picked up and understood by foreign listeners in
many different countries. It probably had more listeners in the US than in any part
of the British empire. The BBC was able to run its Empire Service without fear of
being seen explicitly to target foreign audiences, or of violating international
agreements concerning the transmission of propaganda, because it could claim
merely to be providing programmes in the British empire’s own common lan-
guage aimed at listeners ‘under the flag’. However, some refused to believe that the
Empire Service was entirely innocent of persuasive intent. Its lavish coverage of
royal events was, for example, clearly designed to project British culture and
identity overseas, to whoever was willing to listen. As one former BBC employee
argued, broadcasts of royal media events represented ‘the high-water mark of
propagandist pageantry in a democratic country’.³²
In much the same way, during the 1930s the Nazi regime developed a powerful
short-wave operation and used it to disseminate a positive image of Germany’s
cultural heritage and of the intentions and achievements of fascism. The German
global station at Zeesen also broadcast news reports and commentaries designed
to promote the regime’s foreign policy agenda (see Chapter 6). Zeesen broadcast
in a range of foreign languages, targeting different countries and audiences with
bespoke services. Fascist Italy established its own global short-wave station at
Rome, again serving listeners in a range of languages, notably English for audi-
ences in the US. Like Zeesen, broadcasts from Rome included plenty of cultural
programming, designed to project Italian soft power, and the station also provided
regular news bulletins.
During the 1930s, news became a staple of international broadcasting, a means
for broadcasters to shape and influence public debates in other countries and thus
to further the agendas of the states that backed them. By 1937, the ‘great nations’
had already begun to ‘chase each other around the globe with their versions of
³² Richard S. Lambert, Propaganda (London, 1938), 143.

    17
Figure 4 Front cover, Philips Radio Station Chart for Australian listeners,
c. mid-1930s, Federation University Australia Historical Collection, 03650.
18   
news’.³³ Some broadcasters and states also began to establish radio monitoring
operations, to gather news from foreign stations, facilitate counter-propaganda
broadcasts, and provide valuable open-source intelligence. Some also experi-
mented with jamming the services of their rivals. Internationalist utopias seemed
to dissolve under the pressures put on the wireless world by the requirements of
nation-states.
While the activities of frontier stations were reasonably targeted, regional and
global stations allowed Europe’s developing radio wars to spill over into the wider
wireless world. Listeners in the US constituted a crucial audience, as did those in
some geopolitically significant areas of the Global South. In particular, during the
later 1930s the Middle East became a contested arena for rival international
wireless services, as fascist and democratic European states vied to reach listeners
in a key area of geopolitical competition. This reflected the importance of the
region as a transport and resource hub, and the stubborn colonial presence of
Britain and France despite growing Arab nationalism and Palestinian resistance to
Jewish settlement. As Italy, Germany, Britain, and France fought to win the
support of local populations, they deployed wireless services directly to reach
local elites, seen as the key to controlling the loyalties of the different countries and
territories of the Middle East. Moreover, because many men across the region
listened communally to radio sets in cafés and other public venues (women were
generally excluded from such spaces), wireless also offered a means to target
‘ordinary’ listeners, who were often illiterate and thus difficult to reach using
other, print-based forms of propaganda.³⁴
Broadcasting to the Middle East highlighted the issue of access to the wireless
world. If the full potential of international radio propaganda was to be realized,
broadcasters had to ensure that members of the intended audience were able to
tune-in. This could be difficult to achieve. Utopian dreams about radio as a
limitless and universal means of global mass communication did not correspond
with reality. In 1928 one Canadian newspaper claimed that a pioneering broadcast
from the US to India would be ‘heard by more than 50,000,000 people of India,
and will constitute the first great unification of the two nations by radio’.³⁵ In fact,
at that time only a few thousand people in India had access to radio receivers, and
two years later the fledgling Indian Broadcasting Company, which operated
transmitters at Bombay and Calcutta, collapsed for want of listeners.³⁶ When
the US broadcast to India in 1928, was anybody really listening?
³³ Silas Bent, ‘International Broadcasting’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 1/3 (July 1937), 117–21, quote
at 118.
³⁴ Callum A. MacDonald, ‘Radio Bari: Italian Wireless Propaganda in the Middle East and British
Countermeasures 1934-38’, Middle Eastern Studies, 13/2 (May 1977), 195–207.
³⁵ ‘U.S. Radio Broadcast to be Heard in India’, Toronto Globe, 26 Dec. 1928.
³⁶ Simon J. Potter, Broadcasting Empire: The BBC and the British World, 1922–1970 (Oxford,
2012), 79.
    19
Certainly, in planning their response to fascist broadcast propaganda, the BBC

and the British government found it hard to gauge exactly how many people
across the Middle East had access to receiving sets capable of picking up medium-
or short-wave transmissions. Estimates varied widely, making it difficult to decide
whether a short-wave global station or a medium-wave regional station would be
most effective. Reports reaching British policymakers suggested that the Italian
government was distributing subsidized or free receiving sets to café owners across
the region, to increase the effectiveness of fascist broadcast propaganda. These sets
were, it was claimed, designed to be able to pick up Bari and Rome, but not British
or French stations. There was precedent for this attempt to widen, and simultan-
eously control, access to the wireless world. In Nazi Germany, the state supported
the production of the Volksempfänger, a cheap affordable radio set that gave the
regime improved wireless access to the homes of Germans, while making it
difficult for listeners to pick up foreign stations that might carry anti-Nazi
propaganda. ‘Wired’ wireless systems, which brought programmes to listeners
via landlines, offered another means of simultaneously widening and controlling
access to radio (see Chapter 2), as did the public loudspeaker systems that were
deployed in the USSR and Nazi Germany. In official discussions about improving
access to radio in British colonies during the later 1930s, civil servants and BBC
staff saw the virtues of emulating the communist and fascist approach. On an
experimental basis, communal sets were distributed to Indian villages, enclosed in
sealed metal boxes. They were pre-tuned to All India Radio and operated using a
timer switch: they turned on and off at pre-set hours, meaning that villagers could
not decide when to listen or what to listen to.³⁷ Similarly, a hundred communal
sets were ordered by the Government of Palestine and distributed to Arab villages.
These sealed receivers were only capable of picking up the state-controlled
Palestine Broadcasting Service station at Ramallah. Each set had only a single
control, an on-off switch, operated by a lock-and-key mechanism: the key was
entrusted to a village elder.³⁸
Inequality was thus an inherent feature of the wireless world during the 1920s
and 1930s. Only states that had access to sufficient resources, or that were willing
and able to divert them from other more productive uses, could cover the
escalating costs of operating frontier, regional, and global stations. Few states in
the Global South could afford international broadcasting. Those that did spend
money on it were generally colonial regimes, which either received subsidies from
the imperial power, or diverted resources from the welfare of colonial subjects, to
support frontier or regional stations. Moreover, not everyone enjoyed the ability
to access the wireless world as a listener. Outside of North America, north-west
³⁷ Report on the Progress of Broadcasting in India up to the 31st March 1939 (Delhi, 1940), 126–7.
³⁸ A.G. Wauchope to W. Ormsby-Gore, 10 Jan. 1938, United Kingdom National Archives (hence-
forth UKNA), Kew, FO 395/559.
20   
Europe, and a few other prosperous enclaves, individual or family listening in the
home was a privilege enjoyed only by select members of a wealthy elite. In many
parts of southern and eastern Europe, communal listening remained the norm.
Similarly, across the Global South, only a privileged few could listen, including
white colonial settlers and expatriates, although by the late 1930s communal
listening was beginning to allow wider access.
As well as intervening to improve and control access to the wireless world,
during the 1930s colonial regimes conducted surveillance designed to understand
the listening habits of the colonized and to facilitate crackdowns on subversive
forms of listening (see Chapter 7). Europe’s radio wars spilled over into surprising
places, in unpredictable ways. In 1937 the British Foreign Office investigated
reports from the Alexandria City Police that an ‘Italian Maltese’ priest had set
up a loudspeaker outside the Catholic church at Damanhour, Egypt, and was
bombarding passers-by with programmes from Radio Bari. This was, it was
believed, part of a wider propaganda drive involving cooperation between the
Italian state and the Catholic Church.³⁹ Increasingly, as the prospect of war in
Europe loomed, national, imperial, and colonial states sought further to restrict
such troubling activities, and to regulate access to the wireless world even more
strictly.
Echoes of War
By 1939 many of the essential and enduring features of twentieth-century

international broadcasting—the dominating role of the state, international com-
petition and entanglement, global inequalities of access—had thus already been
established. The Second World War represents a less significant point of depart-
ure than the existing historiography would have us believe. The war certainly did
see a massive increase in the resources devoted to the wireless world by many
states, and some important changes in the nature and tone of broadcast services
and propaganda (see Chapters 3 and 4). International broadcasting became the
essential means for reaching across borders to the inhabitants of allied, neutral,
occupied, and enemy countries, when many other methods of communicating
information and propaganda were heavily restricted. However, this was largely a
change of degree. Wartime approaches did not overturn pre-war practices and
precedents, but rather built upon them.
Moreover, during the war the international broadcasting initiatives of different
countries remained tightly entangled. Fierce international competition for listen-
ers encouraged cross-border borrowings, and broadcasters continued to learn
³⁹ D. V. Kelly to Anthony Eden, 6 Sept. 1937, UKNA, FO395/551.

    21
from and emulate one another. Broadcasters facing common enemies were
particularly keen to share knowledge and practices, and to cooperate with one
another as part of wider wartime alliances. Such entanglements multiplied as new
broadcasters entered the wireless world, most notably with the proliferation of US
international services under the aegis of the newly established Voice of America
(VOA). American broadcasters developed particularly close collaborative rela-
tionships with their British counterparts as they sought to reach out to audiences
across Europe and beyond. Broadcasters like the BBC and VOA also reacted to
and emulated the practices and programmes of their enemies.
By 1939, international broadcasting had already begun to play a significant role
in the lives of many listeners, and to take on new social and cultural meanings, in
ways that would become further entrenched over the decades that followed. That
year, a notable survey of British radio listening habits was published, based on
research in a predominantly working-class district of Bristol conducted by Hilda
Jennings and Winifred Gill. Their report provided a detailed analysis of how radio
listening was developing as a social practice. They argued that national and
international broadcasts had already become part of everyday domestic life, with
families gathering to listen (collectively agreeing on what station to tune-in,
although with parents often having the final say) and to talk about what they
heard. Often such discussion took place at the same time as listening, with people
speaking or shouting over the sound of the radio, in an increasingly noisy sonic
environment: ‘when conversation drowns the broadcast the set is turned on louder
still’. Jennings and Gill also argued that radio coverage of foreign affairs, from
British and overseas stations, was drawing ordinary people into a new sense of
connection and engagement with international events: ‘the ordinary working man
and woman is becoming a conscious citizen of the nation and of the world’.⁴⁰
A similar picture of the ordinary listener’s engagement with the wireless world
was presented in a dramatized wartime BBC radio feature, The Ear of Britain,
written and produced by the Scottish playwright and drama and features producer
Robert Kemp.⁴¹ This programme made a number of interesting claims about
distant listening as a social practice. First broadcast in February 1940 on the
BBC Home Service, The Ear of Britain sought to draw a parallel between the
work of the BBC’s radio monitoring operations and the everyday experiences of
British families when they turned on their radio receivers. BBC Monitoring had
been expanded dramatically following the outbreak of war, seeking to record and
evaluate the content of foreign broadcasts, and to use this intelligence to inform
the work of BBC programme makers and news editors, as well as of a range of
government departments and the military. In The Ear of Britain, the work of BBC
⁴⁰ Hilda Jennings and Winifred Gill, Broadcasting in Everyday Life: A Survey of the Social Effects of
the Coming of Broadcasting (n.p., 1939), 23, 25, 39–40.
⁴¹ Radio Times, 29 Mar. 1940. The Ear of Britain was originally broadcast on 4 Feb. 1940.
22   
Monitoring was equated with the process of evaluating and refuting lying enemy
propaganda that went on ‘in a small way in the homes of many British listeners’ on
a daily basis.⁴² The programme’s narrator invited listeners to eavesdrop on a
fictional, middle-class English family gathered around their own wireless set one
evening. Increasingly frustrated by the repetitive fare on offer on the BBC Home
Service, the family began to seek out distant stations and to discuss what they
heard.
Kemp’s script played on assumptions about gender and distant listening that
had become commonplace during the 1920s and 1930s. Distant listening was
often depicted as a male-dominated practice: boys and men, fascinated by radio,
supposedly pioneered the art of picking up foreign stations in the 1920s by
building and upgrading their own primitive receiving sets, and then, during the
1930s, took charge of the family’s ‘all-wave’ receiver. Accordingly, in The Ear of
Britain it is the son, ‘Bill’, who volunteers to undertake the tricky task of tuning-in
a foreign station. As Jennings and Gill had reported, deciding what station to listen
to was a matter that involved input from the entire family, and in Kemp’s script
Bill is directed by different family members to seek out particular foreign stations.
However, in doing so, he subtly focuses on the programmes that he himself wants
to hear, thus provoking further argument around the fireside. ‘Mother’ berates Bill
for his incessant search for different stations: ‘I can’t bear it when you go fiddling
with those knobs . . . changing from station to station without stopping to listen to
anything’. This dialogue reflected an entrenched belief that men and women
approached distant listening differently: males supposedly derived satisfaction
from ‘bagging’ as many stations as possible, regardless of the quality of the signal,
whereas women wanted to hear one programme clearly, and to enjoy it. Men
could be inconsiderate listeners, constantly adjusting the tuning knob and trying
to find ever-more-distant stations, while the rest of the family, and particularly the
women, suffered.⁴³
In The Ear of Britain, Bill searches for an English-language news bulletin
because he likes ‘to hear what the foreigners are saying’. Mother grudgingly
acquiesces, but only if Bill promises that he will not ‘switch on that awful
German – I will not have his voice in my house’. This was a clear reference to
the Nazi broadcast personality Lord Haw-Haw, whose programmes, aimed at
British listeners, were transmitted from Germany (see Chapter 4). When, infuri-
ated by Bill’s knob-twiddling, Mother leaves the room to make the evening cocoa,
the rest of the family seize their chance to listen to Haw-Haw, and then try to hide
their transgression when Mother returns to the room and catches them out. The
introduction of Haw-Haw was used by Kemp to make further, gendered claims
⁴² All quotes from the Ear of Britain are taken from the following archived version, https://archive.
org/details/1940RadioNews/1940-02-04-BBC-The-Ear-Of-Britain.mp3, accessed 2 Nov. 2021.
⁴³ Potter, Wireless Internationalism, 216–20.
    23
about the experience of listening to radio propaganda: ‘Father’ claims that women
generally respond to Haw-Haw with anger, whereas men find him amusing. More
generally, Father claims, while men like to dissect enemy broadcasts and analyse
their strengths and weaknesses, using rationality and reason, women respond to
broadcast propaganda on an emotional level. Gender stereotypes thus continued
to play a key role in contemporary understandings about the social, cultural, and
political impact of distant listening.
Kemp’s script also brought together claims about radio listening, propaganda,
and liberty in a way that was to become a fundamental feature of British and
American wartime discourses about international broadcasting (see Chapter 4).
As the family continues to argue around the radio set, Mother insists that the
government should make it an offence to listen to German broadcasts. As is made
clear later in the feature, the Nazis punished German listeners severely if they
tuned-in foreign stations. However, Father, again presented as the male voice of
reason, argues that this approach is fundamentally wrong: ‘one of the reasons we
are fighting this war is so that we can continue, as it were, to tune-in where we
like’. Kemp’s script argued that British listeners should be free to listen to any
station and be trusted to evaluate what they heard for themselves. Ultimately, he
maintained, they would learn to reject the lies of Nazi wireless propaganda (see
Case Study 4.2). This argument, that it was ‘un-British’ to restrict what people
listened to, of course ignored continuing attempts to control access to the wireless
world in British colonies.
Decolonizing the Wireless World
After 1945, structures, policies, and approaches created for use prior to and during
the Second World War were repurposed to help fight the Cold War on air. In
many ways, 1945 seemed to mark an even less significant turning point than had
1939: the BBC’s East German service was, for example, ‘a Cold War creation
whose wartime parentage was starkly evident’.⁴⁴ What was perhaps most mark-
edly different was the range and diversity of antagonists drawn into the developing
conflicts around the wireless world after 1945, in both the Western and Eastern
blocs and also, crucially, in the ‘non-aligned’ states of the Global South. An
increasing number of states and broadcasters used radio to pursue their geopol-
itical and ideological agendas and to persuade international audiences that their
causes were just.
Historians have devoted a great deal of attention to the role of international
broadcasting during the Cold War but have focused overwhelmingly on
⁴⁴ Patrick Major, ‘Listening Behind the Curtain: BBC Broadcasting to East Germany and its Cold
War Echo’, Cold War History, 13/2 (2013), 255–75, quote at 273.
24   
institutional and political themes. They are only just beginning to explore the
significance of international broadcasting as part of a ‘cultural Cold War’, to pay
attention to the content and cultural significance of programmes and services, and
to discuss how audiences received what was offered to them (see Chapter 6). They
are also only now starting to examine the relationship between international
broadcasting and processes of political and cultural decolonization in the Global
South during this period.
The Cold War was in some ways the golden age of international broadcasting,
with expansion and innovation driven by geopolitical rivalries and ideological
conflict. Between 1945 and 1989 radio was probably the single most important
means of mass communication across the Iron Curtain, uniquely positioned to
allow ideas, information, and culture to flow back and forth despite the barriers
that states attempted to erect between the opposing blocs. The wireless world
provided a space where listeners could encounter people, places, and ideas other-
wise closed off to them, and gave émigrés and defectors a chance to maintain
contact with (and seek to influence) their homelands. Yet at the same time
international broadcasting was very clearly a key weapon in the Cold War
ideological context, allowing states directly to reach and seek to influence other-
wise inaccessible overseas audiences and thus to further their own geopolitical
agendas. Ultimately, the tune was called by those who paid the piper.
International broadcast services remained tightly entangled in the context of
the new radio wars that were waged after 1945. Established global services like
the BBC (subsidized by the British Foreign Office) and VOA (funded by the
US State Department) continued to operate, targeting listeners in friendly,
neutral, and enemy territory. New European global players included Radio
Nederland Wereldomroep (Radio Netherlands Worldwide, RNW, established in
1947), Germany’s Deutsche Welle (established in 1952), and Radio France
Internationale (RFI, established in 1975 and replacing earlier French international
broadcasting operations).⁴⁵ New frontier and regional stations were also set up
along the Iron Curtain, including Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Radio in
the American Sector, RIAS), which began broadcasting in 1946. Funded by the US
government, RIAS broadcast from occupied territory to listeners in both West and
East Germany, and also to German speakers across Central and Eastern Europe
(see Case Study 7.2). From 1951, Radio Free Europe (RFE) meanwhile broadcast
from Munich across the Soviet satellite states in a range of languages, seeking to
act as a ‘surrogate’ broadcaster for occupied nations behind the Iron Curtain.
From 1953, Radio Liberty (RL) broadcast to the USSR, deploying similar methods.
Both RFE and RL were covertly funded by the CIA (see Chapter 3).
⁴⁵ Anke Fiedler and Marie-Soleil Frère, ‘ “Radio France Internationale” and “Deutsche Welle” in
Francophone Africa: International Broadcasters in a Time of Change’, Communication, Culture &
Critique, 9 (2016), 68–85.
    25
Together, the various frontier, regional, and global stations run by the Western
powers offered a formidable and flexible means of targeting different audiences
with a range of bespoke messages. As one East German commentator put it: ‘What
Radio in the American Sector cannot manage with its heavy-handed yokel-
baiting, Radio Luxembourg is supposed to achieve with schmaltzy hit parades
and idiotic write-ins. If that does not work, the BBC is ready with its “objective”,
refined news programmes, and failing that, then Sender Freies Berlin or West
Germany’s Black Channel jump into the breach. The right thing for every taste.’⁴⁶
Western stations sometimes worked together to coordinate their messaging, and
to attempt to overcome the effects of Eastern-bloc jamming of their signals (see
Case Study 8.2). In the 1950s, the US even planned to establish a ‘ring’ of stations
surrounding the USSR that would, it was hoped, be impervious to jamming, a
sonic equivalent of Cold War nuclear missile deployment strategies.⁴⁷ The com-
munist states meanwhile developed their own diverse set of frontier, regional, and
global stations: Radio Moscow, for example, supplemented transmission facilities
in Moscow and Leningrad with additional outposts across Eastern Europe and
in Cuba.⁴⁸
International broadcasting continued to reflect overarching global inequalities
of power and resources. While the total number of international broadcasters
increased, a few countries remained the dominant players, at least in terms of the
scale of the services they offered. By 1973 the US, USSR, and China together
accounted for over 40 per cent of weekly international broadcast hours.⁴⁹
Nevertheless, the major powers did not maintain unchallenged hegemony over
the wireless world. In the Global South, in the immediate wake of the Second
World War, wireless had briefly and belatedly become an important tool of the
late-colonial state and of imperial interests more generally. Stations set up by
colonial settler and ex-patriate elites, and by colonial and imperial states, had been
expanded as increasingly interventionist bureaucracies sought to promote devel-
opment and trade and to persuade colonial subjects of the virtues of empire. After
independence, these stations were taken over and sometimes repurposed by
successor states, to allow the new regimes to speak to domestic and international
audiences.⁵⁰ During the 1950s and 1960s an increasing number of international
⁴⁶ Quoted in Major, ‘Listening Behind the Curtain’, 273.

⁴⁷ Timothy Stoneman, ‘A Bold New Vision: The VOA Radio Ring Plan and Global Broadcasting in
the Early Cold War’, Technology and Culture, 50/2 (Apr. 2009), 316–44.
⁴⁸ Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, 1–3.
⁴⁹ Calculated from data derived from the BBC’s External Broadcasting Audience Research in Julian
Hales, Radio Power: Propaganda and International Broadcasting (London, 1975), 174. Does not include
Republic of China (based on Taiwan) or warring states in Vietnam and Korea; nor commercial stations;
nor religious stations, which included Adventist (806 hours/week, 1996), Far East Broadcasting
Company (774), Transworld Radio (725), and Vatican Radio (344): see James Wood, History of
International Broadcasting, vol. 2 (London, 2000), 179.
⁵⁰ Marcus Power, ‘Aqui Lourenço Marques!! Radio Colonization and Cultural Identity in Colonial
Mozambique, 1932-74’, Journal of Historical Geography, 26/4 (2000), 605–28. On radio and
26   
broadcasters began operating in the rapidly decolonizing ‘Third World’. These

stations projected a range of contrasting ideologies, from the racism of the South
African apartheid state to the Black nationalism and transnationalism of Ghana,
and from the internationalist communism of Cuba to the powerful anti-
colonialism of Radio Cairo.⁵¹ Some newly independent countries invested in
international broadcasting at the expense of domestic services. By the late 1960s
India maintained an external service operating for 46 hours daily in 21 languages,
even though around a third of domestic listeners could not pick up All India
Radio’s underfunded ‘national’ services.⁵²
Some states in the Middle East invested particularly heavily in international
broadcasting, building powerful medium-wave transmitters to provide them with
a regional voice. Egypt took the lead in these initiatives, prompting intense
competition among its regional rivals. New services blurred the distinction
between home and foreign audiences and capitalized on the intelligibility of
Arabic across the Middle East. Some states in the region, seeking to reach an
even wider set of audiences, also operated global short-wave services in a range of
languages.⁵³ Regional stations meanwhile played a significant role in the broad-
casting operations of many of the states of the post-colonial Caribbean.⁵⁴
Radio stations across the Global South together spread the message of ‘a generic
anticolonial nationalism’ across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean during the 1950s
and 1960s, but also projected more specific messages, serving the geopolitical
interests of their sponsors, and often acting to intensify regional rivalries, antag-
onisms, and conflicts.⁵⁵ Investment in broadcast services targeting listeners in
these regions was further encouraged by the increasing availability of radio
receiving sets in the Global South, particularly in the wake of the ‘transistor
revolution’ of the 1960s (see Chapter 2). In places such as Angola, colonized
Africans listened to ‘guerrilla’ radio stations broadcasting from neighbouring
post-colonial states: they tuned-in clandestinely at home, or even in public using
Vietnamese resistance to French colonial power see Christopher Goscha, ‘Wiring Decolonization:
Turning Technology against the Colonizer during the Indochina War, 1945–1954’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 54/4 (Oct. 2012), 798–831.
⁵¹ James R. Brennan, ‘The Cold War Battle over Global News in East Africa: Decolonization, the
Free Flow of Information, and the Media Business, 1960-1980’, Journal of Global History, 10 (2015),
323–56.
⁵² Eduardo Contreras, James Larson, John K. Mayo, and Peter Spain, Cross-cultural Broadcasting
(Paris, 1976), 10.
⁵³ Douglas Boyd, Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of Radio and Television in the Middle
East (Philadelphia, 1982), 4–5. James Vaughan, ‘Propaganda by Proxy?: Britain, America, and Arab
Radio Broadcasting, 1953-1957’, HJFRT, 22/2 (2002), 157–72.
⁵⁴ Alejandra Bronfman, Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean (Chapel Hill, NC, 2016).
⁵⁵ James R. Brennan, ‘Radio Cairo and the Decolonization of East Africa, 1953-64’, in Christopher
J. Lee (ed.), Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens,
OH, 2010), 173–95, quote at 173. See also Brennan, ‘A History of Sauti ya Mvita (Voice of Mombasa):
Radio, Public Culture, and Islam in Coastal Kenya, 1947-1966’, in Rosalind I. J. Hackett and Benjamin
F. Soares (eds), New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa (Bloomington and Indianapolis,
IN, 2015), 19–38. Bronfman, Isles of Noise, 10, 140–2, 148–50.
    27
portable transistor receivers held to their ears. Colonial states, fighting vicious
counterinsurgency campaigns, recognized the threat posed by nationalist propa-
ganda broadcasts and monitored them closely. However, given the widespread
access to radio provided by the transistor revolution, they could do little to combat
the subversive effects of guerrilla radio.⁵⁶
International broadcasting could thus be an important weapon of liberation,
used to support decolonization and the interests of the colonized and formerly
colonized. Nevertheless, the Global South also remained a key target for broad-
casters in the ‘First’ and ‘Second’ Worlds, reflecting wider geopolitical conflicts
and a desire to either support or combat anti-colonial and neo-colonial propa-
ganda. To this end, old and new imperial powers continued to build transmitters
in colonial and semi-colonial territories, allowing them to operate or relay inter-
national services. Britain thus continued, for example, to broadcast to the Arabic-
speaking world using the Cyprus-based Sharq al-Adna (Near East Broadcasting
Station), a regional station which operated until 1956, when (in the wake of the
disastrous Suez Crisis) it was taken over by the BBC and used to relay Arabic
broadcasts from Britain.⁵⁷ As decolonization intensified, opportunities to establish
frontier and regional stations to target listeners in the Global South became more
limited. Nevertheless, many Western governments found ways to continue this
practice: by the early 1990s, the BBC World Service was boosted by relay stations
located in the Caribbean, Cyprus, Masirah Island in the Persian Gulf, the
Seychelles, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.
‘Anyone examining [the BBC’s] relay network . . . might be forgiven for believing
that Britain had never lost its empire.’⁵⁸
The Wireless World in a Digital Age
From the 1960s, undersea cables, and then satellites, provided new means to relay
radio programmes over long distances and to improve reception quality. Initially
at least, these new technologies tended to augment rather than undermine the
reach of international radio broadcasting. Short wave remained a key means to
reach audiences around the world.⁵⁹ The impact of direct satellite and cable
television broadcasting represented a more significant challenge. These new
technologies made it possible to transmit television signals internationally, direct
⁵⁶ Marissa J. Moorman, ‘Guerrilla Broadcasters and the Unnerved Colonial State in Angola
(1961–1974)’, Journal of African History, 59/2 (2018), 241–61. On broadcasting by exiled members
of South Africa’s African National Congress see Stephen R. Davis, ‘The African National Congress, Its
Radio, Its Allies and Exile’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35/2 (June 2009), 349–73.
⁵⁷ Andrea Stanton, ‘Part of Imperial Communications: British-Governed Radio in the Middle East,
1934–1949’, Media History, 19/4 (2013), 421–45.
⁵⁸ James Wood, History of International Broadcasting, vol. 1 (Stevenage, 1992), 168–9.
⁵⁹ Ibid., 116–25.
28   
into homes and, crucially, hotels and other places where politicians and business-
people gathered. The US-based Cable News Network launched its CNN
International channel in 1985, a pioneering global 24-hour rolling news channel
that threatened to usurp much of the territory previous occupied by international
radio. Other international broadcasters were obliged to follow suit: the BBC
established its World Service Television (now BBC World News) channel in
1991. Like early short-wave services, these global television news channels were
initially designed to reach elite audiences. However, as satellite and cable access
broadened, they also became a serious competitor for international radio broad-
casts aimed at a wider audience.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of communist
regimes across Eastern and Central Europe and in the USSR posed a further
challenge, and potentially an existential threat, to international broadcasters. The
Cold War had long provided a key justification for many governments to invest in
the wireless world. International broadcasters in the Western bloc boasted of
having played a key role in winning the conflict. However, with the so-called
‘end of history’ occasioned by the collapse of Soviet communism, the need to
project Western soft power and propaganda to distant audiences now seemed less
pressing. With the merits of Western capitalism and democracy seemingly
proven, politicians and civil servants began to question whether states still needed
to subsidize international broadcasters. The impact of geopolitical change was
compounded by the digital revolution, which began in earnest during the last
decade of the twentieth century. The World Wide Web promised to become a new
ether, offering limitless and universal media access to people across the globe. The
future of the wireless world seemed uncertain.
New priorities and new technologies together duly led to a reduction in state
investment in traditional forms of international radio broadcasting during the
last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first.
Many services were cut back or eliminated entirely. However, as the Afterword
to this book emphasizes, predictions of the demise of international radio
broadcasting proved premature. The wireless world lived on, as international
broadcasters exploited new media, found new audiences, and tapped new
sources of funding. Although the BBC World Service, for example, stopped
broadcasting on short wave to North America, Australia, and New Zealand in 2001,
it instead began to serve audiences in these places using Internet radio and AM/FM
relays.⁶⁰ At the same time, it continued directly to support British foreign policy
interests through, for example, radio drama programmes aimed at listeners in
Afghanistan and Nepal that addressed ‘social issues relating to conflict and national
⁶⁰ Arlyn T. Anderson, ‘Changes at the BBC World Service: Documenting the World Service’s Move
from Shortwave to Web Radio in North America, Australia, and New Zealand’, Journal of Radio
Studies, 12/2 (2005), 286–304.
    29
reconciliation’.⁶¹ In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the subsequent
US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, new reasons to engage in international
broadcasting emerged. In 2008 the BBC established BBC Arabic Television (now
BBC News Arabic), and BBC Persian Television (now BBC News Persian) the
following year. Although a major funding cut was announced in 2008, ending
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office grant-in-aid to the BBC, from 2015 the
World Service received renewed state support from the department’s Overseas
Development Assistance budget. This allowed it to establish seventeen new
foreign-language radio and online services: audiences in Russia, North Korea,
the Arabic-speaking world, and across Africa and Asia were priority targets. The
BBC World Service claimed in 2015 to be ‘the UK’s most important cultural
export’ and announced its aim of reaching half a billion people a year by 2022.⁶²
By the end of 2021, it claimed to be on-track to achieve this goal, with an average
weekly audience for BBC services of 489 million adults. This included an
audience of 456 million adults for BBC international news services, across all
broadcast and online platforms.⁶³ The next goal is to reach a global audience of a
billion by the end of the decade.⁶⁴ In 2022, BBC short-wave services for listeners
in Russia and Ukraine were reinstated, following the outbreak of war in the
region (see Afterword). This was a powerful reminder of the enduring import-
ance of the wireless world.
Britain and the BBC were not alone in seeing international radio broadcasting
as a continuing priority rather than a legacy medium. As initial confidence in the
universal and benign cultural and political impact of the Internet and social media
began to wane, states and NGOs maintained or even increased their investments
in international radio services. In 2013, France’s RFI operated a global FM relay
network that included 156 radio stations in sixty-two countries, with programmes
also rebroadcast by 700 ‘partner’ stations. Satellite links allowed RFI material to be
relayed by local stations at high fidelity. Its services included a round-the-clock
programme for French-speakers in Africa, and programmes in twelve foreign
languages. RFI aimed to find a unique niche for itself by becoming a ‘pan-African’
broadcaster, specializing in bringing coverage from around the continent to
listeners in many different countries. In this way it would complement local
media and develop an audience. In Kinshasa, it claimed that more than 80 per
cent of people could be considered regular RFI listeners.⁶⁵
⁶¹ Andrew Skuse, ‘Radio Sound and Social Realism: In the Terrain of Drama for Development
Production’, International Communication Gazette, 73 (2011), 595–609, quote at 596.
⁶² British, Bold, Creative: The BBC’s Programmes and Services in the Next Charter (Sept. 2015), 6,
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/pdf/futureofthebbc2015.pdf, accessed 27 Jan. 2022.
⁶³ https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2021/bbc-reaches-record-global-audience, accessed 27 Jan. 2022.
⁶⁴ Colin Mann, ‘BBC Targets 1bn Global Audience’, https://advanced-television.com/2020/08/
24/bbc-targets-1bn-global-audience/, accessed 27 Jan. 2022.
⁶⁵ Fiedler and Frère, ‘ “Radio France Internationale” ’, 77–9.
30   
Conclusions
Thinking about the cultural history of international broadcasting and about how
contemporaries understood the wireless world and their place within it, either as
broadcasters or as listeners, is of more than peripheral importance. Radio broad-
casting was never just a technology or a pragmatic act of one-to-many commu-
nication. It was, and is, also a set of social and cultural practices that have been
transformed over time by human decision-making, ingenuity, and thought, and
that have in turn exercised influence over human culture and society. Historians
of other forms of mass communication already know this. As James W. Carey has
argued, the mass media do not just reflect or mirror human relations: they have
played a much more active role, and have ‘altered modern consciousness, feeling
and social relations’.⁶⁶ Historians of international broadcasting need to pay
attention to this insight, and to explore how the lives of people around the globe
have, over time, been influenced by the wireless world.
In this regard, specificities of place and time are of crucial importance. The
history of international broadcasting cannot be understood as a single global story.
The way that broadcasters, states, and audiences engaged with the wireless world
varied dramatically, over time and from place to place. Connections and entangle-
ments were many and complex. This diversity needs to be explored and under-
stood rather than simplified or glossed over. In particular we must avoid writing
the history of international broadcasting as the projection of the experience of one
or two countries onto the entire wireless world. British and American broadcasters
have dominated the existing historiography, but they were far from the only voices
on the world’s airwaves during the twentieth century, and were certainly not
always the loudest or most appealing to listeners. Other broadcasters often did
things very differently, and listeners consumed radio and reacted to what they
heard in diverse ways at different times and in different places.
For much the same reason, we must reject the myth of universal access that has
characterized so much writing and rhetoric about the wireless world. The chapters
that follow explore the global history of international broadcasting as a history of
connectedness and entanglement, but also seek to highlight the limits and inequal-
ities of transnational connectivity. They seek to highlight those places where
connectedness was routine, part of the everyday experience of many people, and
those where it was restricted or entirely absent. They seek to identify the people
who were able to use radio listening to connect to a wider world, and those who,
due to a range of political and material constraints, could not. In doing so they
illustrate how radio reached out to new transnational communities and served a
⁶⁶ Carey, Communication as Culture, 1–2.

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
and the promise of rich spoils induced him to follow the preceding
party, in contradistinction to which his stout and lusty recruits were
dubbed the ‘strong-backs.’[965] Hearing that two other vessels had
been fitted out to follow the Pánuco expeditions, and were probably
now cruising along the coast, Cortés ordered a crew to be sent in
pursuit, with the sole desire, as he expressed it, to save them from
the fate which had so nearly overtaken Camargo. One was never
heard of, and the other, the largest, entered the port before the
searching vessel had left, it seems, bringing about one hundred and
twenty men and sixteen horses. Camargo was induced to
remonstrate with the captain against proceeding to Pánuco, since
the result could only be disastrous, the native lord having, beside,
tendered allegiance to Cortés in Montezuma’s time.[966] But the
captain would not listen to him. To the joy of Cortés, however, a
storm arose, which obliged this captain to slip his anchor and put to
sea; obliged him to take refuge in San Juan de Ulua harbor, where
he found his vessel so unsafe as to require her to be stranded,
whereupon the forces and armaments were landed.[967] Cortés at
once sent a sympathizing message, offering the captain every
assistance, but never for a moment intending to give him any. He
even tendered other vessels for his voyage—so he tells the emperor.
[968]But there is no doubt that the tender was illusive, and that he
did all in his power, with bribery, promises, and even force, to secure
the men and armament, and at the same time to weaken his rivals
by their loss. According to some accounts he caused their vessels to
be sunk to prevent departure,[969] an act which Oviedo declares a
fair war measure, particularly on the part of Cortés, who greatly
needed reinforcements. Men destined for so comparatively
unattractive a region as Pánuco must have been pleased by the
prospect of ready spoils and Mexican treasures soon to fall into their
hands under so able and successful a leader as Cortés. They were
therefore readily induced to join him, the captains alone, as in the
last instance, interposing objections for a while. These several
accessions amounted, according to the testimony of Cortés, to about
two hundred men and some twenty horses,[970] together with a large
quantity of small-arms, artillery, and ammunition. Thus again and
again was the shrewd and lucky Cortés aided by the very means
which his great enemies and rivals had sent to be used against him;
aided to reap the advantages they had planned and plotted to
secure. And all the while he was pitting the antagonisms of native
foes one against another, employing them also to assist him in
securing the grand prize. Greatness is but another name for good
fortune. Circumstances certainly did as much for Cortés in promoting
success as Spanish arms and superior civilization.
Civilization! What fools we are, pluming ourselves in its radiance,
the radiance of ghastly electrical lights, adopted instead of the
glorious sun of nature. For is not the unartificial nature, and nature
God, while artifice is rather of the devil? And yet we persist in
glorifying artifice and calling it deity. The human sacrifice of the
Aztecs was a horrible rite, but in the hands of the Spaniards is not
Christianity a bloody mistress? And does not European civilization
constantly demand the sacrifice of millions of lives, if not for the
propitiation of gods, then to avenge an insult, to preserve the
integrity of a nation, or to gratify the spleen of rulers? At hand even
now, coming to the assistance of the magnificent Cortés,
civilization’s pride and pet for the moment, is another ally of
civilization, more terrible than horses, blood-hounds, gunpowder, or
steel. At the time of Narvaez’ departure for Cuba, small-pox was
raging there so severely that it offered a reason for preventing the
governor from leaving with the expedition. A pioneer vessel of the
fleet sowed the malady at Cozumel, whence it entered the continent.
Before it spread far in this direction Cempoala was infected by a
negro slave of Narvaez.[971] The Spaniards knew little about its
treatment, and that little they sought to impart, not for their own
safety, since those that were left of them were considered almost
proof against the malady, but for the sake of the allies. Their advice
did not avail much, however, for the natives were too devoted to their
panacea, the hot and cold bath, which only intensified the evil. The
terrible force of the first attacks of epidemics and endemics is well
known, and it has been advocated with apparent truth that the
diseases of a strong people fall with particular force on weaker
races. After desolating the coast region for some time, the small-pox
crossed the plateau border during the summer, and in
September[972] it broke out round the lakes, on its way to the
western sea, smiting high and low, rich and poor. For sixty days,
according to native records, the hueyzahuatl, or great pest, raged
here with such virulence as to fix itself a central point in their
chronology. In most districts, says Motolinia, over half the population
died, leaving towns almost deserted, and in others the mortality was
appalling. Those who recovered presented an appearance that
made their neighbors flee from them, until they became accustomed
to the sight. Learning how contagious was the disease, and terrified
by the number of deaths, the inhabitants left the bodies to putrefy,
thus aiding to extend the pest. In some cases the authorities ordered
the houses to be pulled down over the dead, so as to check the
contagion. Not the least of the evil was a famine, which resulted from
a lack of harvesters.[973]
Among the first victims at the capital were King Totoquihuatzin,
of Tlacopan, and Cuitlahuatzin, the successor of Montezuma. The
latter had ruled barely three months,[974] but sufficiently long to
prove himself a most able leader of his people in their struggle for
liberty, for he was brave, full of devices, and energetic, yet prudent; a
man who, not content with securing the expulsion of invaders, had
sought to strengthen his position with alliances and by attracting the
subject provinces through gifts, remissions, and promises. If he did
not succeed so well as he had hoped, the fault must be ascribed to
the reputation of the previous government and to dereliction of duty
among his officers.
As a monarch he would not have fallen far short of the native
ideal, for as a general he had distinguished himself; and, the brother
of Montezuma, he had in his court imbibed the dignity and majestic
manner born of constant adulation from subservient nobles and
plebeians. Crafty and unscrupulous, he appears not to have
hesitated at crime and breach of faith to secure his aims for personal
and state advancement. The flourishing condition of his own
province indicated a not unwise administrator; and the beauty of
Iztapalapan, its magnificent palaces, and exquisite gardens filled
with choice plants from different regions, pointed to a ruler of
cultivated taste.
There is no doubt that Mexico lost in him one of the most
promising of sovereigns, and perhaps the only leader capable of
giving her a longer lease of freedom in face of the irresistible
onslaught of foreigners.[975] Thus bravely worked the small-pox for
Cortés and the superior civilization.
The strongest candidate for the Mexican throne was now the
high-priest Quauhtemotzin,[976] a young man of about twenty-
three[977] years, rather handsome, of fairer complexion than the
average of his race, grave and dignified, as befitted a prince, and
‘quite a gentleman for an Indian.’ He is said to have been the son of
Montezuma’s sister by Itzquauhtzin, lord of Tlatelulco, the twin town
or suburb of Mexico, who had been fellow-prisoner of the late
emperor, and sharer in his fate.[978] The brothers and descendants
of Montezuma had been pretty well removed by death, or through
the machinations of Cuitlahuatzin; but if nearer legitimate claimants
existed, Quauhtemotzin had eclipsed them all in experience,
influence, and fame, as a brave and able leader. As the chief
companion of his predecessor, and one who even before the
appearance of the latter had led the uprising against the Spaniards,
he had become identified as a true patriot, keeping himself at the
head of the dominant party which began and continued the struggle
for freedom. In order further to secure his influence he had taken to
wife the only legitimate daughter of Montezuma, Princess Tecuichpo,
or Isabel; and although the marriage was merely nominal, she being
but a child, yet the alliance served the intended aim.[979] The
Tepanecs at the same time elected as successor to their king, his
son Tetlepanquetzaltzin,[980] whose coronation took place at the
same time as that of Quauhtemotzin, hallowed by the blood of
captive enemies, including no doubt some Spaniards. Cohuanacoch
had meanwhile been chosen at Tezcuco in lieu of the disowned
protégé whom Cortés had foisted upon them. By this trio were taken
up the plans of Cuitlahuatzin for the deliverance of the country from
her invaders, and especially were their efforts directed toward
securing the loyalty of provinces and allies which had been stirred by
the alarming progress of Spanish arms in Tepeaca.
A loss to the Spaniards through the epidemic, which outweighed
many a gain, was the death of Maxixcatzin, to whose devoted
friendship they chiefly owed their escape from the recent crises;[981]
for he it was who took the lead in offering the Tlascaltec alliance and
in overthrowing the inimical plans of the younger Xicotencatl in favor
of the Aztecs. When the sad news came, Cortés felt as if he had lost
a father, says Bernal Diaz, and mourning robes were donned by
quite a number of the captains and men. In this they felt the more
justified, since the chief, on finding himself stricken by the dread
disease, had expressed a wish to become a Christian, and with the
name of Lorenzo had received baptism at the hands of Olmedo, who
joyfully hastened to Tlascala to perform so welcome a service for the
Spaniards’ champion. He died exhorting his family and friends to
obey Cortés and his brethren, the destined rulers of the land, and to
accept their god, who had given victory over the idols.[982] It was
fortunate that he did not die before Spanish prestige had been
reëstablished by the Tepeaca campaign; for his friendship sufficed to
confirm the allies in their adhesion, to gain for the Spaniards further
coöperation, and to obtain for them a firm footing in the country.
The allied forces had become so numerous by the time Itzucan
fell that they were absolutely unmanageable, and on returning from
this place to Tepeaca Cortés dismissed them with friendly words to
their homes, retaining only the tried Tlascaltecs, who had become
efficient in the European style of warfare under the Spanish
discipline and tactics.[983]
Before the Quauhquechollan expedition summoned him away,
Cortés had begun a report to the emperor on the condition of affairs.
On returning, he completed this his second and perhaps most
interesting letter, dated at Segura de la Frontera, or Tepeaca,
October 30, 1520, wherein are related the occurrences since the
despatch of the first letter in the middle of July, a year before. “I write
your Majesty,” it states, “although poorly told, the truth of all that has
happened in these parts, and that which your Majesty has most need
of knowing. With the aid of God the conquest is progressing in this
new country, which from its similarity to Spain, in fertility, extent,
temperature, and many other things, I have called La Nueva España
del Mar Océano.” Then he proceeds to humbly beg his majesty to
confirm this name. In a brief supplementary letter he asks the
emperor to send a person of confidence to investigate and prove the
truth of his statements.[984]
The council also wrote a letter to the emperor, speaking
hopefully of the conquest, which already “extended, over one
hundred and fifty leagues of the coast, from Rio Grande de Tabasco
to Rio de Pánuco,”[985] while the remainder of the interior was on the
sure way to reduction, under the able leadership of Cortés, whose
valor and energy they praised.
They prayed that he, the beloved of all the troops, might be
confirmed in the office of captain-general, as the only man whose
genius and experience could be relied on to carry out and maintain
the conquest. The natives being docile and ready to receive
conversion, friars should be sent to secure this harvest for the
church, and also to administer to the spiritual wants of the
Spaniards. Colonists were needed; also horses, and other live-stock
—the latter to be paid for at a future time—in order to secure the
country and develop its wealth.
With these letters went one from the army, which, recounting but
briefly the leading incidents of the campaigns, had for its main object
to decry Narvaez and Velazquez as the sole cause of all the
disasters that had occurred in the country, and to praise Cortés as a
noble, loyal, and able man, by whom alone the conquest could be
achieved.[986] These and other letters were intrusted to Alonso de
Mendoza, a townsman of Cortés, together with thirty thousand
pesos, in fifths and presents, and a number of commissions from
different members of the expedition. A well appointed vessel was
assigned for the voyage, and three other vessels were despatched
for Española, there to enlist recruits and to buy horses, arms and
ammunition, cattle, clothing, and other requirements, and four strong
vessels to maintain traffic with the Antilles. Letters were sent to
Licenciado Rodrigo de Figueroa and other royal officers on the
Island, inclosing duplicates of those forwarded to Spain; and a
number of specimens of the jewels, manufactures, and natural
resources of the country, were transmitted as presents and as
samples to allure recruits. The letters and the ample funds for the
enlistment and purchases were intrusted to Contador Ávila and
another officer,[987] with instructions to use every effort to confirm the
audiencia officials in their good opinion of Cortés, so that they might
plead his cause in Spain. The ill-treatment of Aillon by Velazquez
and Narvaez had already impelled them to do this, as we have seen.
Their advice was to be asked regarding the enslavement of rebels
and other measures, and their authority and aid sought for obtaining
men and stores.[988] Another vessel was sent under Solis[989] to
Jamaica to buy horses and war material. Bernal Diaz does not fail to
point out the evidence in the large remittance for Spain and the
Antilles of treasures secretly taken from Mexico by Cortés and his
clique, and accuses him of having appropriated also the share for
Villa Rica, claimed to have been captured by the Indians during its
transmission from Tlascala.[990]
No sooner were these preparations announced than Duero and
a number of others of the Narvaez party claimed a fulfilment of the
promise regarding their departure. The success of the Spanish arms
and the allurement of spoils had reconciled most of the lately
disaffected, so that those who now demanded to return were only a
few of the more wealthy. The services of these could be readily
dispensed with, now that such large reinforcements had been
received, and the display of their accumulations at home might
inspire fresh recruits. Therefore Cortés gave his consent, with
abundant promises that as soon as the conquest was fully
accomplished, gold and other rewards would flow on those who
supported his cause either in the Islands or in Spain. Leaders like
Duero and Bermudez were the chief recipients of such offers; and
offers alone they remained in most instances, for Cortés was not the
man to reward desertion. Duero and others evidently expected
nothing more, since they were soon after found arrayed on the side
of Velazquez. When some among the Cortés party raised objections
to this diminution of the force, they were quieted with the declaration
that the army was better rid of unwilling and inefficient soldiers,
whose presence served only to discourage others.[991]
The vessel for Spain and two of those for the Islands were
wrecked on the coast; and one consequence was that Mendoza’s
departure was delayed till the 5th of March. He took with him a
supplementary letter for the emperor, relating the progress so far
made for the recovery of Mexico. By this time Ordaz was, according
to Bernal Diaz, commissioned to join him and plead the cause of
Cortés before the emperor, and at the same time to receive the
reward for his many achievements, one of which was the ascent of
the volcano. Several of the Narvaez party appear to have left by the
same vessel.[992]
In course of the late campaign the advantages of the town of
Tepeaca for permanent occupation had become apparent, chiefly as
a point of observation for watching over the new conquest. It was
well situated for protecting the road to Villa Rica,[993] and for
communicating with Cholula and Tlascala, each capital eight or nine
leagues distant, and it lay in the midst of a fertile maize country,
which offered ample subsistence for a garrison. Although the
punishment at first inflicted, by sacking and enslaving, had been
severe, yet the treatment of the inhabitants became afterward so
considerate that they themselves prayed for a continuance of
Spanish protection.[994] Every circumstance, therefore, demanding a
settlement, it was decided in council to found a villa in this same
town, with the appropriate name of Segura de la Frontera, intended,
as it was, to secure the frontier against the Mexicans. Pedro de Ircio
was made alcalde, with Francisco de Orozco and others as
regidores.[995]
The campaign being practically concluded, a division was
ordered to be made of the spoils not hitherto distributed, including
slaves, which had now become a prominent feature thereof, and
were intended for personal and plantation service, as already
practised in the Antilles. The pretence was to enslave only the
inhabitants of districts concerned in the murder of Spaniards, but the
distinction was not very strictly observed, and rebellious tribes and
those addicted to cannibalism and other vicious practices were
included.[996] The Spaniards, as a rule, kept only the women and the
children, the men being transferred to the allies for their share,
“because they were difficult to watch,” says Bernal Diaz, “and
because their services were not needed while we had the
Tlascaltecs with us.”[997]
The soldiers were ordered to bring in all their captives, which
from the first had been branded for recognition with a ‘G,’ signifying
guerra, war.[998] When the day for distribution came, it was found
that the leaders and favored men had already secured their share by
appropriating the prettiest and choicest slaves. They had probably
been priced by the officials, and the leaders, being entitled to larger
shares, had secured the best articles. At this there was a
considerable uproar, increased by the outcry against the fifth set
apart for Cortés, after deducting the royal fifth.[999] How the matter
was settled is not clear, except that the general had recourse to the
soothing eloquence he knew so well how to apply, promising that for
the future he would conform to the general desire, which appeared to
be in favor of offering the slaves at auction, so as to arrive at their
proper value, and to give all members of the expedition an equal
chance in securing the more desirable.[1000]
One of the last expeditions fitted out at Segura was for the
reduction of the northern route to Villa Rica, by which the Spaniards
had first entered the plateau, and for the punishment of those
concerned in the murder of Alcántara and other Spaniards.[1001] It
set out in the beginning of December, under Sandoval, with two
hundred infantry, twenty horses, and the usual complement of allies,
and entered Xocotlan valley, which readily submitted, with the
exception of the main town, named Castilblanco during the first entry
into the country. The cacique, who had then already shown himself
unfriendly, rejected every proposition, with the threat that he would
make a feast on the commander and his followers, as he had on the
former party. There being no alternative, the cavalry charged the
large force which had taken up position near a ravine, on the
outskirts of the city, with a view to defend the entrance. Under cover
of the musketeers and archers, who from one side of the ravine did
considerable harm to the enemy, the charge succeeded, though four
riders and nine horses were wounded, one of the latter dying. The
enemy thrown into disorder fled to join the remaining garrison, which
occupied the temples on the plaza. With the aid of the infantry and
allies the stronghold speedily fell, and a number of prisoners were
secured.[1002]
Proceeding northward along the mountain border of the plateau
Sandoval added a considerable extent of country to his conquest,
meeting serious opposition only at Jalancingo, where the Aztec
garrison, ever since the beginning of the Tepeaca campaign, had
been employed in fortifying the place, and either considered
themselves secure or feared that a surrender would procure no
better terms, for them, at least. They were disconcerted by being
attacked on different sides, under native guidance, and after a brief
resistance took to flight, during which a number of them were
captured, the Spaniards losing three horses, and having eight men
severely injured, Sandoval receiving an arrow wound. In a temple
were found relics of slaughtered Spaniards, in the shape of dresses,
arms, and saddles.[1003] A few days later the expedition set out to
rejoin the army, with a large amount of spoils and a train of captives.
The chiefs were pardoned by Cortés, with politic regard for the
future, and enjoined to furnish their quota of supplies at Segura.[1004]
The head-quarters had meanwhile been removed to Tlascala,
preparatory to a march on Mexico, and Segura was now in charge of
the alcalde, Pedro de Ircio, lately lieutenant of Sandoval at Villa Rica,
assisted by the regidor, Francisco de Orozco, and sixty men,
including the invalids and the disabled.[1005] Cortés had left it in the
middle of December,[1006] taking with the cavalry the route through
Cholula,[1007] to settle the question of succession to a number of
cacique offices vacated during the epidemic. These appeals were
made to him not only as the representative of the Spanish monarch
to whom the people had sworn obedience, but as an
acknowledgment of his influence over the native mind. His treatment
of the conquered and his equitable decisions of disputes had made
him the umpire and king-maker whom not only allies, but half-
reconciled tribes were willing to heed, in private and public affairs.
Having made the appointments, and formed favorable arrangements
for himself, he rejoined the army. The march to Tlascala was one
befitting the return of conquering heroes. Triumphal arches covered
the roads, and processions came to chant the praises of the victors,
and recount the successes achieved by the Tlascaltec allies, as
shown by spoils and banners from different provinces and cities, and
by long files of captives. On nearing the republican capital the whole
population came forth to join in the ovation, and at the plaza an
orator stepped forward to greet Cortés in a glowing panegyric,
wherein he reviewed his progress as conqueror and avenger. In
reply Cortés alluded feelingly to the brotherhood between the two
races, now cemented by blood and victories, and to the common
loss sustained in the death of the wise and noble Maxixcatzin. These
words, added to the evidence of sorrow in the mourning array of their
dress and arms, left a most favorable impression on the minds of the
brave allies.
He was again called as representative of his king to appoint as
successor to Maxixcatzin his eldest legitimate son, a boy of twelve
years, against whom a claimant had arisen.[1008] This done, Cortés
dubbed him a knight, according to Castilian usage, in recognition of
the services of his father, causing him also to be baptized, with the
name of Juan, Maxixcatzin becoming the family name.[1009] Taking
advantage of the occasion and of his own popularity, the general
sought to inspire a more general feeling in favor of his religion, but
the effort met with little encouragement, and he wisely refrained from
pressing so dangerous a subject. According to Bernal Diaz, the elder
Xicotencatl was among the limited number of saved souls, and
received the name of Vicente.[1010] The native records, as given by
Camargo and Torquemada, and adopted by most writers, assume
that the four chiefs were all baptized at this time, if not earlier; but
they are neither clear nor consistent, and are evidently impelled by a
desire to redeem the native leaders from the charge of idolatry.
Cortés, Herrera, Diaz, and other chroniclers would not have failed to
record so large and prominent a conquest for the church, particularly
since the two latter do mention the exceptional converts.[1011] Cortés
also refers to a conversion in the person of Tecocoltzin, a younger
brother of King Cacama, and the future head of Tezcuco, who is
named Fernando; but he does so in a manner which indicates that
the conversion was exceptional.[1012] His baptism took place
probably on the same day as that of young Maxixcatzin and old
Xicotencatl, the occasion being celebrated with banquets and
dances, with illumination, sports, and exchange of presents, the
Spaniards adding horse-races and other interesting proceedings for
the gratification of the natives.
FOOTNOTES
[959] ‘Con este ... vino vn Francisco Lopez, vezino, y Regidor que fue de
Guatimala.’ Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 113. Vetancurt assumes that Pedro del
Castillo—Diaz calls him ‘el Almirante Pedro Cauallero’—secured Barba and his
vessel. Teatro Mex., pt. iii. 148; Cortés, Residencia, ii. 165.
[960] ‘El capitã Diego de Camargo,’ says Herrera; but Bernal Diaz explains that
this man stepped into the captaincy on the murder of ‘fulano Alvarez Pinedo,’ at
Pánuco. ‘Dixeron, que el Capitan Camargo auia sido Fraile Dominico, e que auia
hecho profession.’ Hist. Verdad., 114.
[961] Seven leagues up, says Herrera.
[962] ‘Muerto diez y siete ó diez y ocho cristianos, y herido otros muchos.
Asimismo ... muerto siete caballos.’ Cortés, Cartas, 144. Bernal Diaz assumes
that the whole attacking force was killed and some vessels destroyed. ‘Dexaron
vna carauela,’ says Herrera.
[963] Herrera states that hunger caused the land expedition to abandon the
vessels some twenty leagues above Almería. The people from the wrecked
caravel were taken on board the last vessel. dec. ii. lib. x. cap. xviii. Cortés leaves
the impression that both vessels arrived at Villa Rica, perhaps because the one
was wrecked so near it. ‘Vn nauio ... y traia sobre sesenta soldados.’ Bernal Diaz,
Hist. Verdad., 114. This may include the land party, but not the sailors.
[964] ‘Con hasta treinta hombres de mar y tierra.’ Cortés, Cartas, 154. ‘Sus
soldados, que eran mas de cincuenta, y mas siete cauallos,’ says Bernal Diaz,
Hist. Verdad., 114; and, since Cortés would be less apt to indicate large
accessions, he may be correct.
[965] ‘Este fue el mejor socorro.... Diaz de Auz sirvió muy bien a su Magestad en
todo lo que se ofreciò en las guerras, ... traxo pleyto despues, sobre el pleyto de
la mitad de Mestitan, ... conque le den la parte de lo que rentare el pueblo mas de
dos mil y quinientos pesos.’ Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 114-15. He was excluded
from the town itself, owing to cruel treatment of Indians.
[966] ‘El señor de aquel rio y tierra, que se dice Pánuco, se habia dado por vasallo
de V. M., en cuyo reconocimiento me habia enviado á la ciudad de Tenuxtitan, con
sus mensajeros, ciertas cosas.’ Cortés, Cartas, 144-5. But this is probably a mere
assertion, since the Spanish expeditions had never been higher than Almería, and
the cacique could have had no inducement for submitting.
[967] Bernal Diaz refers to the last accession from Garay’s expeditions as 40
soldiers and 10 horses, under an old man named Ramirez. Protected by heavy
cotton armor they were nicknamed the ‘albardillas.’ Hist. Verdad., 115.
[968] ‘Si todos ó algunos dellos se quisiesen volver en los navíos que allí estaban,
que les diese licencia.’ Cortés, Cartas, 163.
[969] Oviedo, iii. 335; and so Herrera also intimates in reference to Camargo’s
only remaining vessel, ‘la qual se anegò tãbien dẽtro de 10. dias en el puerto.’
dec. ii. lib. x. cap. xviii.
[970] The last two vessels bring 150 men and 16 horses, probably over 20, to
which must be added Camargo’s force, amounting no doubt to 50 effective men,
for Bernal Diaz admits 60 soldiers, not counting sailors; and Herrera intimates that
over 100 men must have reached Villa Rica of the total force on board Camargo’s
three vessels. Bernal Diaz’ estimates for the five vessels which he enumerates
exceed 170 soldiers and 20 horses; on fol. 115 he contradicts several points,
including the total, to which the sailors may be added, while a small reduction is to
be made for deaths among Camargo’s men. Vetancurt follows Bernal Diaz, and so
does Prescott, who assumes that full 150 men and 20 horses must have been
obtained. Mex., ii. 438. Robertson raises this nearer to the truth by saying 180
men, Hist. Am., ii. 104, as does Brasseur de Bourbourg, who nevertheless, on an
earlier page, adds Sahagun’s fanciful reinforcement of 300 men. Hist. Nat. Civ., iv.
371, 387. While the Spaniards were curing themselves, ‘llegó á Tlaxcala un
Francisco Hernandez, español, con 300 soldados castellanos y con muchos
caballos y armas.’ Sahagun, Hist. Conq., i. 37. The later edition does not give the
number. Gomara merely states that numerous small parties came over from the
Antilles, attracted by Cortés’ fame, through Aillon’s reports, he seems to say. Many
of them were murdered on the way, but sufficient numbers reached him to restore
the army and encourage the prosecution of the conquest. Hist. Mex., 173.
[971] Said to have been named Francisco Eguia. Sahagun, Hist. Conq., i. 39, 66,
and Chimalpain, Hist. Conq., i. 278. Herrera writes that many assumed the malady
to have been one of the periodical scourges that used to fall on the country. ‘Y el
no auer tocado a los Castellanos, parece que trae aparencia de razon.’ dec. ii. lib.
x. cap. iv. But it appears to have been wholly a new disease to the natives.
[972] ‘En el mes que llamaban Tepeilhuitl que es al fin de setiembre,’ as Sahagun
assumes. Hist. Conq., i. 39.
[973] Motolinia, Hist. Ind., in Icazbalceta, Col. Doc., i. 14-15; Sahagun, Hist.
Conq., i. 39, 66; Mendieta, Hist. Ecles., 514; Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 101; Id.
(Paris ed. 1837), iv. 460 (a chapter omitted in the original); Gomara, Hist. Mex.,
148; Chimalpain, Hist. Conq., i. 279; Torquemada, i. 489; Tezcoco en los ultimos
tiempos, 273.
[974] ‘Vivió despues de su elecçion solos sessenta dias.’ Cano, in Oviedo, iii. 549.
The election having taken place twenty days after Montezuma’s death, according
to Ixtlilxochitl, who assumes that he ruled only 40 or 47 days. Hist. Chich., 304; Id.,
Relaciones, 413. Others extend the rule to 80 days, both as leader and king,
perhaps, which would agree with Cano’s version.
[975] Such characteristics may be seen in Spanish as well as native records; yet
Solis writes, ‘su tibieza y falta de aplicacion dexáse poco menos que borrada
entre los suyos la memoria de su nombre.’ Hist. Mex., 372. Sufficient proof of his
energy is found in the siege resulting in the expulsion from Mexico.
[976] The native authorities incline to Quauhtemoc, but the Spanish generally add
the ‘tzin,’ the ‘c’ being elided, and the ‘Q’ changed to ‘G,’ making the name
Guatemotzin. ‘Quauhtemoc, que significa Aguila que baja.’ Vetancvrt, Teatro Mex.,
pt. iii. 51.
[977] Bernal Diaz describes him about a year later as 23 or 24 years old, while on
another occasion he alludes to him as 25. Hist. Verdad., 112, 155. Ixtlilxochitl
makes him 18. Hist. Chich., 304.
[978] ‘Por muerte de su Padre gobernaba el Tlatelulco.’ Duran, Hist. Ind., MS., ii.
479. ‘Sobrino de Monteçuma, que era papa ó saçerdote mayor entre los indios.’
Cano, in Oviedo, iii. 549; Peter Martyr, dec. v. cap. vi. ‘Cuauhtemotctzin hijo del
rey Ahuitzotzin y de la heredera de el Tlatelulco.’ Ixtlilxochitl, Relaciones, 413.
This incorrect view is adopted by Brasseur de Bourbourg and many others.
[979] ‘Moglie già del suo Zio Cuitlahuatzin,’ is the supposition of Clavigero, Storia
Mess., iii. 160. ‘Se hizo temer de tal manera, que todos los suyos temblauan dél.’
Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 112. For fanciful portraits of these last two emperors,
see Frost’s Pict. Hist. Mex., 104, 114.
[980] Ixtlilxochitl, loc. cit.; Torquemada, i. 570.
[981] ‘Al que solo fue causa q̄ los Christianos se conseruassen en aquella tierra.’
Herrera, dec. ii. lib. x. cap. xix.
[982] Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 118; Herrera, ubi sup.
[983] During the absence of the troops, says Herrera, a part of the Tepeacans had
formed a plot to surprise them when divided; but some women informed Marina in
time to prevent trouble. Cortés inflicted on them severe chastisement. dec. ii. lib. x.
cap. xvi. xviii.
[984] The reports and other papers by Cortés, written during a period of nearly
three decades in connection with New Spain, are both numerous and lengthy, but
only the five letters relating to the actual conquest of Mexico and Central America
have achieved bibliographic celebrity, under the title of Cortés’ Letters or
Relations. Although the first letter has been lost, and the companion letter long
missing, yet an allusion to the expedition against Mexico appeared as early as
1520 in Ein auszug ettlicher sendbrieff dem aller durchleüchtigisten
grossmechtigistẽ Fürsten ... von wegen einer new gefundẽ Inseln. Nürmberg
durch Fryderichen Peypus am. 17. tag Marcij MDXX., wherein the voyages of
Córdoba and Grijalva are also described. Harrisse, Bib. Am. Vet., 179, assumes
that the information is taken from Peter Martyr’s Decades. A later brief reference
to the city of Mexico itself is given in Translationuss hispanischer sprach zü
Frantzösisch gemacht so durch dẽ Vice Rey in Neapole fraw Margareten
Hertzogiñ iñ Burgundi zü geschrieben, published in 1522. On folio A. iii. is written:
Not far from the same island they have conquered a city called Tenustitan,
wherein 60,000 hearths have been counted, within a good wall. The letter of the
ayuntamiento was first published in Col. Doc. Inéd., i., 1842.
By the time of the receipt in Spain of Cortés’ second letter, of October 30,
1520, the general and his conquest had become so famous that his
communications were not likely to be lost sight of. The incidents treated of were
besides highly enticing, particularly the victories in Tlascala, the entry into
Montezuma’s wonderful island city, the disastrous expulsion, and the renewal of
the campaign, and Cromberger had it printed in 1522 under the title of Carta de
relaciõ ẽbiada a su. S. majestad del ẽpador nt̃o señor por el capitã general dela
nueua spaña: llamado fernãdo cortes, etc. Seuilla: por Jacobo crõberger aleman.
A viii. dias de Nouiẽbre. Año de M. d. y xxij. ‘Fué las Primicias de el Arte de la
Imprenta en Sevilla, y acaso de toda España,’ observes Lorenzana, in Cortes,
Hist. N. España, 171, but this is a great mistake, for printing had been done
already for several decades in Spain. An Italian abstract of the letter appeared
immediately after, as Noue de le Isole & Terra ferma Nouamente trouate In India
per el Capitaneo de larmata de la Cesarea Maiestate. Mediolani decimosexto
calẽ. Decembris M.D.XXII. A reprint of the Seville text was issued at Saragossa in
January, 1523. A later abridged account of the conquest is given in Ein schöne
Newe zeytung so Kayserlich Mayestet auss India yetz newlich zükommen seind,
ascribed to Sigmund Grimm of Augsburg, about 1522. Bibliotheca Grenvilliana
and Harrisse. Ternaux-Compans wrongly supposes the narrative to extend only to
1519, instead of 1522, and assumes the imprint to be Augsburg, 1520. Bibl.
Amér., 5. Perhaps 1523 is the more correct date, which may also be ascribed to
Tres sacree Imperiale et catholique mageste ... eust nouuelles des marches ysles
et terre ferme occeanes. Colophon, fol. 16. Depuis sont venues a sa mageste
nouuelles de certaīes ysles trouuez par les espagnolz plaines despecerie et
beaucoup de mines dor, lesquelles nouuelles il receupt en ceste ville de vailladolid
le primier doctobre xv. cent. xxij. This is a book noticed by no bibliographer except
Sabin, who believes that it contains only the second letter, although the holder
supposes the third letter to be also used. In 1524 appeared the first Latin version
of the second letter, by Savorgnanus, Praeclara Ferdinãdi Cortesii de Noua maris
Oceani Hyspania Narratio, Norimberga. M.D.XXIIII., which contains a copy of the
now lost map of the Gulf of Mexico, and also a plan of Mexico City. In the same
year two Italian translations of this version, by Liburnius, La Preclara Narratione,
were printed at Venice, one by Lexona, the other by Sabio, yet both at the
instance of Pederzani. The plan and map are often missing. Antonio, Bib. Hisp.
Nova, iii. 375, mentions only Lexona’s issue. A translation from Flavigny appeared
in the Portfolio, Philadelphia, 1817. The originals of the second and other letters
were, in the early part of the eighteenth century, ‘en la Libreria de Don Miguel
Nuñez de Rojas, del Consejo Real de las Ordenes,’ says Pinelo, Epitome, ii. 597.
Much of the vagueness which involves the narrative of events previous to the flight
from Mexico may be due to the loss of diary and documents during that episode.
The loss was convenient to Cortés, since it afforded an excuse for glossing over
many irregularities and misfortunes.
The third letter, dated Coyuhuacan, May 15, 1522, and relating the siege and
fall of Mexico, was first published at Seville, on Cromberger’s press, March 30,
1523, as Carta tercera de relaciõ: embiada por Fernãdo cortes capitan y justicia
mayor del yucatan llamado la nueua espana del mar oceano. It received a
reproduction in Latin by the same hand and at the same time as the second letter.
Both were reprinted, together with some missionary letters and Peter Martyr’s De
Insulis, in De Insvlis nuper Inventis Ferdinandi Cortesii. Coloniæ, M.D.XXXII. The
title-page displays a portrait of Charles V., and is bordered with his arms. Martyr’s
part, which tells rather briefly of Cortés, found frequent reprint, while the second
and third letters were republished, with other matter, in the Spanish Thesoro de
virtudes, 1543; in the German Ferdinandi Cortesii. Von dem Newen Hispanien.
Augspurg, 1550, wherein they are called first and second narratives, and divided
into chapters, with considerable liberty; in the Latin Novus Orbis of 1555 and 1616;
and in the Flemish Nieuwe Weerelt of 1563; while a French abridgment appeared
at Paris in 1532. The secret epistle accompanying the third letter was first printed
in Col. Doc. Inéd., i., and afterward by Kingsborough and Gayangos.
The fourth letter, on the progress of conquest after the fall of Mexico, dated at
Temixtitan (Mexico), October 15, 1524, was issued at Toledo, 1525, as La quarta
relacion, together with Alvarado’s and Godoy’s reports to Cortés. A second edition
followed at Valencia the year after. The secret letter accompanying it was not
published till 1865, when Icazbalceta, the well known Mexican collector,
reproduced it in separate black-letter form, and in his Col. Doc., i. 470-83.
The substance of the above three relations has been given in a vast number
of collections and histories, while in only a limited number have they been
reproduced in a full or abridged form, the first reproduction being in the third
volume of Ramusio Viaggi, of 1556, 1565, and 1606, which contains several other
pieces on the conquest, all supplied with appropriate headings and marginals.
Barcia next published them direct from the manuscript, in the Historiadores
Primitivos, i. This collection bears the imprint Madrid, 1749, but the letters had
already been printed in 1731, as Pinelo affirms, Epitome, ii. 597. Barcia died a few
years before his set was issued. From this source Archbishop Lorenzana took the
version published by him under the title of Historia de Nueva-España, Mexico,
1770, which is not free from omissions and faults, though provided with valuable
notes on localities and customs, and supplemented with illustrated pieces on
routes and native institutions, a map of New Spain by Alzate, an article on the
Gobierno Politico by Vetancurt, a copy of a native tribute-roll from picture records,
not very accurately explained, and the first map of Lower California and adjoining
coast, by Castillo, in 1541. This version of the letters was reproduced in New York,
1828, with a not wholly successful attempt by Del Mar to introduce modern
spelling. The work is also marked by a number of omissions and blunders, and the
introductory biographic sketch by Robert Sands adds little to its value. An
abridgment from Lorenzana appeared as Correspondance de Fernand Cortés, par
le Vicomte de Flavigny, Paris, 1778, which obtained three reprints during the
following year at different places. A great many liberties are taken with facts, as
may be imagined; and the letters are, beside, misnamed first, second, and third.
From the same source, or perhaps from Flavigny, of whom they savor, are Briefe
des Ferdinand Cortes, Heidelberg, 1779, with several reproductions, and with
notes; and the corrected Brieven van Ferdinand Cortes, Amsterdam, 1780-1. The
first edition in English, from Lorenzana, was issued by Folsom, as Despatches of
Hernando Cortes, New York, 1843, also with notes.
The fifth letter of the conqueror, on the famous expedition to Honduras, dated
at Temixtitan, September 3, 1526, lay hidden in the Vienna Imperial Library till
Robertson’s search for the first letter brought it to light. Hist. Am., i. xi. He made
use of it, but the first complete copy was not published till of late, in Col. Doc.
Inéd., iv. 8-167, reprinted at New York, 1848, and, in translation, in the Hakluyt
Society collection, London, 1868. It bore no date, but the copy found at Madrid has
that of September 3, 1526, and the companion letter printed in Col. Doc. Inéd., i.
14-23, that of September 11th. This, as well as the preceding letters, was issued
by Vedia, in Ribadeneyra’s Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, xxii.; the first three
letters being taken from Barcia, and the fifth from its MS. The letter of the
ayuntamiento is given and a bibliographic notice of little value. A very similar
collection is to be found in the Biblioteca Historica de la Iberia, i. But the most
complete reproduction of the principal writings by Cortés, and connected with him,
is in the Cartas y Relaciones de Hernan Cortés, Paris, 1866, by Gayangos, which
contains 26 pieces, beside the relations, chiefly letters and memorials to the
sovereign, a third of which are here printed for the first time. Although a few of
Lorenzana’s blunders find correction, others are committed, and the notes of the
archbishop are adopted without credit, and without the necessary amendment of
date, etc., which often makes them absurd. The earliest combined production of
Cortés’ relations, and many of his other writings, may be credited to Peter Martyr,
who in his Decades gave the substance of all that they relate, although he also
mingled other versions. Oviedo, in the third volume of his Hist. Gen., gives two
versions of the conquest, the first, p. 258 et seq., almost a reproduction of Cortés’
letters, and the other, p. 506 et seq., from different sources.
Beside the relations, there are a number of miscellaneous letters, petitions,
orders, instructions, and regulations, by Cortés, largely published in Navarrete,
Col. de Viages; Col. Doc. Inéd.; Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc.; Icazbalceta,
Col. Doc.; Kingsborough’s Mex. Antiq.; Alaman, Disert., and as appendices to
histories of Mexico. A special collection is the Escritos Sueltos de Hernan Cortés,
Mex., 1871, forming vol. xii. of the Bib. Hist. de la Iberia, which presents 43
miscellaneous documents from various printed sources, instructions, memorials,
and brief letters, nearly all of which are filled with complaints against ruling men in
Mexico.
Cortés’ letters have not inaptly been compared by Prescott to the
Commentaries of Cæsar, for both men were military commanders of the highest
order, who spoke and wrote like soldiers; but their relative positions with regard to
the superior authorities of their states were different, and so were their race
feelings, and their times, and these features are stamped upon their writings.
Cortés was not the powerful consul, the commander of legions, but the leader of a
horde of adventurers, and an aspirant for favor, who made his narrative an
advocate. The simplicity and energy of the style lend an air of truth to the
statements, and Helps, among others, is so impressed thereby as to declare that
Cortés ‘would as soon have thought of committing a small theft as of uttering a
falsehood in a despatch addressed to his sovereign.’ Cortés, ii. 211. But it requires
little study of the reports to discover that they are full of calculated misstatements,
both direct and negative, made whenever he considered it best for his interest to
conceal disagreeable and discreditable facts, or to magnify the danger and the
deed. They are also stamped with the religious zeal and superstition of the age,
the naïve expressions of reliance on God being even more frequent than the
measured declarations of devotedness to the king; while in between are calmly
related the most cold-blooded outrages on behalf of both. There is no apparent
effort to attract attention to himself; there is even at times displayed a modesty
most refreshing in the narrative of his own achievements, by which writers have as
a rule been quite entranced; but this savors of calculation, for the general tone is
in support of the ego, and this often to the exclusion of deserving officers. Indeed,
generous allusions to the character or deeds of others are not frequent, or they
are merged in the non-committing term of ‘one of my captains.’ Pedro de Alvarado
complains of this in one of his Relaciones, in Barcia, Hist. Prim., i. 165-6. In truth,
the calculating egotism of the diplomate mingles freely with the frankness of the
soldier. Cortés, however, is ever mindful of his character as an hidalgo, for he
never stoops to meanness, and even in speaking of his enemies he does not
resort to the invectives or sharp insinuations which they so freely scatter. His style
bears evidence of training in rhetoric and Latin, yet the parade of the latter is not
so frequent as might be expected from the half-bred student and zealot. Equally

The Wireless World Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting 1St Edition Simon J Potter All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

The Wireless World Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting 1St Edition Simon J Potter All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Wireless World Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting 1St Edition Simon J Potter All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Wireless World: Global Histories Of

International Radio Broadcasting 1st

The Wireless World

The Wireless World

SIMON J. POTTER, DAVID CLAYTON, FRIEDERIKE

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,

References in this volume to the history of broadcasting in the Portuguese

Timeline of Key Dates 277

1. Front cover, BBC Portuguese Service promotional brochure, 1941,

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABSIE American Broadcasting Station in Europe

xii   

SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

About the Authors

Simon J. Potter is Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol. He has

Friederike Kind-Kovács is Senior Researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute for

Vincent Kuitenbrouwer is Senior Lecturer in the History of International Relations at the

xiv   

Rebecca Scales is Associate Professor of History at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

2   

After carrying out an on-the-spot upgrade of his receiver to eliminate the

    3

Strange’s metaphor—a voyage of discovery on a short-wave sea—evoked an

4   

⁷ ‘The Virtue of the Foreign Programmes’, W-R, 12 Feb. 1932.

    5

¹² ‘Geneva Must Be Supported’, RS, 15 Jan. 1926.

6   

    7

8   

    9

Creating the Wireless World

During the 1890s, more or less simultaneously, scientists in a number of different

¹⁸ ‘The Story of the Transatlantics’, QST, Feb. 1922.

10   

    11

audiences, with radio broadcasting the supply available to be picked up remained

²⁰ Potter, Wireless Internationalism, 21–5.

12   

    13

The Nation-State in the Wireless World

While radio sometimes appeared to be a limitless medium, in reality international

²⁴ For more on all these themes see Potter, Wireless Internationalism.

14   

was generally governments that encouraged or directed broadcasters to reach

    15

into Germany, and the German authorities responded by signiﬁcantly upgrading

16   

³² Richard S. Lambert, Propaganda (London, 1938), 143.

    17

18   

    19

Certainly, in planning their response to fascist broadcast propaganda, the BBC

20   

By 1939 many of the essential and enduring features of twentieth-century

³⁹ D. V. Kelly to Anthony Eden, 6 Sept. 1937, UKNA, FO395/551.

    21

22   