‘Whoever seeks to detect the fundamental waves in the economic currents of our time’, Karl Knies wrote in 1857, ‘is repeatedly steered towards the world-historical revolution in the means of communication.’ 1 A few years earlier, the man later considered a founding father of the German ‘Historical School’ of economics had published an analysis of The Railways and their Effects, and now he set out to consider the impact of an equally transformational technology-the electric telegraph. Keywords: Germany, nineteenth century, historiography, modernity, modernization, networks, industrialization, communications revolution, bourgeoisie, global history It ends with a description of the structure of the book as a whole. Bringing together these narratives, the Introduction introduces the book’s principal argument-that, once shorn of its normative connotations, modernization remains a useful concept to illuminate the process through which state and society were transformed during the nineteenth century, and that networks played a crucial role in producing the profoundly ambivalent experience of modernity most often associated with the turn of the twentieth century. It situates the book within discussions surrounding the process of scientific innovation and industrialization during the Sattelzeit, the process of ‘time-space’ compression associated with the communications revolution, the role of networks of transport and communication in the creation of regional and national identities, and the emergence of a new, connected middle class during the nineteenth century. The Introduction presents the historiographical context and main themes of the book.
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