Under the Wire

How did the telegraph, a new and revolutionary form of communication, affect diplomats, who tended to resist change? In a study based on impressive multinational research, David Paull Nickles examines the critical impact of the telegraph on the diplomacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Case studies in crisis diplomacy--the War of 1812, the Trent affair during the U.S. Civil War, and the famous 1917 Zimmermann telegram--introduce wide-ranging thematic discussions on t…