The Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Technology honors the contribution of Brooke Hindle to the work of the Society for the History of Technology. The Fellowship, made possible thanks to the great generosity of his family, is for $10,000 and may be used for any purpose connected with research or writing in the history of technology for a period of not less than four months during the year following the award.
SHOT is proud to award the 2024 Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship to Sebastian James Rose, for his research titled, “The Telegraph From Below: The Indo-European Telegraph Department in Iran and the Persian Gulf, 1862–1932.” Rose explores the expansion, operations, and maintenance of the British Empire’s underwater cables and landlines, concentrating on the agency of labor among subaltern telegraph workers. He argues that rather than a unassailable “tool of empire,” this communications infrastructure was dependent on local relationships, where community members might resist official orders, complicate network business, or appropriate the technology’s capabilities. Rose completed his PhD in 2024 at the Department of History, University of Greenwich.
Rose intends to use his SHOT Hindle fellowship to develop his Ph.D. towards a monograph publication, while adding three new chapters. His new research will probe the internal finances of company records, to unpack its recruitment and hiring mechanisms. Looking at the roles assigned to Anglo-Indian and Armenian labor offers insight into how telegraph department procedures reflected assumptions about race, nationality, and power. Rose will also add material examining how telegraph access gave the Reuters news agency vital links to gather and circulate reports from the Gulf, which in turn structured British perceptions of early twentieth-century political developments. Finally, Rose will analyze how telegraph networks facilitated construction and operation of other imperial spaces and infrastructures, including medical quarantine stations, steamship ports, and airstrips.
Rose’s scholarship offers a valuable opportunity to deepen our understanding of how the history of technology intersects with the histories of empire and business, race and power, international infrastructure and labor. SHOT is delighted to support such excellent research.