The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed

Organised by

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

How do communication technologies shape the diffusion of social unrest in the context of political uncertainty? Most of the scholarship examining the effect of communication technology on mobilization focuses on the capacity of challengers to solve the coordination problem. In this paper, I show that technology also affects the exercise of repression. I exploit quasi-random variations in connections between local agents and Paris during Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in December 1851. Most agents communicated with Paris by the Chappe optical telegraph, a technology that could not function when visibility was low (fog, rain, snow, nightime). I posit that breakdowns in communications prevented the rapid allocation of scarce repressive resources and increased the uncertainty of local agents regarding the success of the coup. I geocode the full record of the repression of the anti-coup uprising (25 000 individual court files) and digitize all time-stamped telegraphic communications between local agents and coup plotters in Paris during the coup (1300 dispatches). I show that weaker connections with Paris resulted in higher levels of mobilization at the canton level.

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