Permanent URL: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/interviews/colonial-communications-podcast-interview-with-charlotte-todd-and-alan-renton-of-pk-porthcurno/
Title: Coloniality and Communications: Interview with Charlotte Todd and Alan Renton
Creator: Sebastian James Rose
Contributors: Charlotte Todd; Alan Renton
Data Provider: Loughborough University
Provider: Coloniality and Communications
Type: Sound
Format: Sound (MP3)
Date: 2025
Language: English
Description: This interview documents the archival holdings and historical significance of Porthcurno as a global hub of submarine telegraphy within British imperial communications networks. Charlotte Todd, Head of Engagement and Collections, and Alan Renton, Collections Manager at the PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications discuss the history of the Eastern Telegraph Company and the remarkable PK Porthcurno archive. 150 years ago, the first international telegraph cable was brought ashore at Porthcurno, connecting Britain to India and later other parts of the British Empire. The museum’s archive includes thousands of unique records from Porthcurno’s lasting communication legacy, including detailed staff records dating back to the first telegraph companies.
Subject: Submarine telegraphy, Eastern Telegraph Company, Cable communications, Porthcurno, Global communications, Telecommunications history, Colonial infrastructure, Archival collections
Spatial Coverage: Porthcurno, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Temporal Coverage: 1870–1930
Rights: CC BY-NC 4.0
Rights Holder: Loughborough University
Is Part Of: Coloniality and Communications – Interviews
Project Context:
Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century is an AHRC funded project run by Prof. Burçe Çelik (P.I.), Dr. Sebastian James Rose (Research Associate) at Loughborough University and artist Sena Başöz.
Coloniality and Communications unveils the historical role and legacy of British telecommunications in the making of colonial spatiality in Mesopotamia and the Middle East in the early 20th century. The project aims to advance decolonial research on media and communications through the epistemological force of regional and geopolitical history. By providing historical research on the past of colonial communications, this project aims to shift Westcentric conceptions, theoretical frameworks and received histories on media and communications.
Focusing on the interplay of communications and state building in Mesopotamia and Iraq from 1918 to 1932, the project challenges and questions existing paradigms in communication studies and the history of technology by asking: How were communications repurposed by the local people as forms of resistance? What roles did communications networks play in the making of colonial and national space? How did communications infrastructures, technologies and networks produce and reproduce colonial violence and control?
This recording was produced as part of the research project Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century.
Learn more at the project website: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/
Related content can be accessed at https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/interviews/