Cable Empires

The Co-Production of Infrastructure, Technology, and International Law

(Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

Cable Empires examines the relationship between communications infrastructure, empire, and international law. From submarine telegraph cables to the fiber-optic systems underpinning today’s digital economy, the book traces how technological systems and legal order were co-produced across empires, markets, and states.

It shows how communications infrastructures unsettled conventional understandings of territory, jurisdiction, and sovereignty while enabling new forms of political and economic power beyond territorial borders. At the same time, these systems depended on labor, capital, territorial access, resource extraction, and legal arrangements that made global connectivity possible.

Bringing together international law, history, and science and technology studies, Cable Empires offers a new account of how infrastructure and technology were intertwined with the development of the international legal order. In an era marked by digital sovereignty and geopolitical rivalry, it highlights the material and historical foundations of contemporary power and the legal arrangements that sustain it.

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