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In Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha, Helen Godfrey traces the connections between submarine telegraphy and the peoples of Singapore and Sarawak (Borneo) who supplied 'gutta percha', the latex insulating the world network of undersea telegraph cables. The book examines the complex inter-relationships linking metropolitan and local environments in a trade once described as a matter of interest to the whole civilized world. Using previously untapped corporate and official archives, trade data and a rich documentary record, the study explores the roles of cable producers, scientists, administrators, and local Chinese and indigenous traders. It reveals how a global trade may transcend technological, geographic and cross-cultural challenges, even hostilities. Motivations and outcomes are more complex than simple commercial gain.
Price: $197.00
Pages: 330
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Global Economic History Series
Publication Date:
22 March 2018
ISBN: 9789004344334
Format: Hardcover
'[The book] is packed with informative graphs correlating the booms and busts in cable laying between 1850 and 1900 with trends in the trade in gutta percha and associated goods. Drawing on both anthropological literature and economists’ analyses of global commodity chains, [Godfrey] illuminates the very different meanings gutta percha acquired as it moved from the forests of Borneo to the cable factories of London before finally being laid to rest at the bottom of the sea.
Godfrey devotes her opening chapters to sketching the history of the cable industry and the workings of the gutta percha markets in Singapore, but her real focus is on the forests and peoples of Sarawak. [...] That the global cable network of the Victorian era owed its existence in part to Iban headhunters’ pursuit of Chinese jars, is just one of the surprising insights to be gleaned from Godfrey’s fascinating book.'
Bruce J. Hunt (University of Texas), in: Technology and Culture, Volume 61, Number 4, October 2020, pp. 1247-1248.
'In important ways, this book helps to further our understanding of Sarawak's economic development, building on seminal works by Daniel Chew and Ooi Keat Jin. But this thorough and perceptive study also encourages its readers to consider Sarawak's contribution to globalization through telegraphy and, therefore, to the contributions Sarawak and its people made to technological innovation and advancement. The care with Godfrey seeks to delineate both the material and the cultural of imagined factors involved in the gutta trade, and their intersection, provides a rare and welcome example of the cultural content and context of economic development being recognized. Intelligently illustrated, with informative diagrams and charts, Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha makes a original and important contribution to our understanding of Sarawak history and, indeed, to Sarawak's contribution to World history.
J.H. Walker (Honorary Visiting Fellow, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia), in: Borneo Research Bulletin, Volume 49, pp 313-316.
Godfrey devotes her opening chapters to sketching the history of the cable industry and the workings of the gutta percha markets in Singapore, but her real focus is on the forests and peoples of Sarawak. [...] That the global cable network of the Victorian era owed its existence in part to Iban headhunters’ pursuit of Chinese jars, is just one of the surprising insights to be gleaned from Godfrey’s fascinating book.'
Bruce J. Hunt (University of Texas), in: Technology and Culture, Volume 61, Number 4, October 2020, pp. 1247-1248.
'In important ways, this book helps to further our understanding of Sarawak's economic development, building on seminal works by Daniel Chew and Ooi Keat Jin. But this thorough and perceptive study also encourages its readers to consider Sarawak's contribution to globalization through telegraphy and, therefore, to the contributions Sarawak and its people made to technological innovation and advancement. The care with Godfrey seeks to delineate both the material and the cultural of imagined factors involved in the gutta trade, and their intersection, provides a rare and welcome example of the cultural content and context of economic development being recognized. Intelligently illustrated, with informative diagrams and charts, Submarine Telegraphy and the Hunt for Gutta Percha makes a original and important contribution to our understanding of Sarawak history and, indeed, to Sarawak's contribution to World history.
J.H. Walker (Honorary Visiting Fellow, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia), in: Borneo Research Bulletin, Volume 49, pp 313-316.
Helen Godfrey, Ph.D. (2011), University of New England, is an independent researcher who has published related material as journal articles. Experiences living in Australasia, Africa, Britain and the Caribbean have widened her research perspectives.