Technodiplomacy

From the 1880s onwards, Portugal applied in Angola the investment programme it
had been implementing in the mainland since the 1850s (fontismo), which was strongly
based in the construction of railways. The initial investment took place in Luanda and
Ambaca, but shortly afterwards Portuguese experts turned their attention to Moçâmedes.
In this paper, we will analyse the process of railway implementation in this district
of the South of Angola from the 1880s until World War I, in three different moments:
the decision-making process, the construction and the operation. Using previously published
bibliography and unpublished primary sources (kept in Portuguese and British
archives), we will highlight the motivations behind the decision to build the railroad
(technodiplomatic, military and economic) and the challenges engineers and workers
faced during construction and operation. In the end we will explain whether the expectations
behind the investment were met or not.

Resumo
Em inícios do século XX os governos portugueses
tiveram a preocupação de manter a
identidade nacional dos caminhos de ferro que
construíam nas colónias, depois de más experiências
com concessionários e empreiteiros
estrangeiros, tanto no Continente como no
Ultramar. Assim, quando surgiu a oportunidade
de construir uma nova linha no distrito
de Lourenço Marques até à Suazilândia, os
responsáveis portugueses esforçaram-se por
manter o caminho de ferro inteiramente nacional.
Neste artigo analisaremos o processo de
decisão e construção desta via-férrea, usando
a metodologia dos large technological systems
transnacionais/cross-borders e o conceito de tecnodiplomacia
no tratamento de fontes arquivísticas
portuguesas e britânicas.

Abstract
In the beginning of the 20th century the Portuguese
governments worried about maintaining
the national identity of the railways they
projected in the colonies, after several bad
experiences with foreign companies and contractors,
both in the mainland and in the overseas
territories. When an opportunity to build a
new line from Lourenço Marques to Swaziland
arose, the Portuguese authorities strived to
keep the railroad entirely Portuguese. In this
paper we aim to examine the process of decision-
making and construction of this railway.
We will use the methodology of the cross-borders/
transnational large technological systems
and the concept of technodiplomacy to analyse
Portuguese and British archival sources.

The Portuguese technocratic elites who, in mid-19th century, supported
Fontismo were largely inspired by the Saint-simonianist ideology,
developed in France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Saintsimonianism
argued for the creation of civilizations of circulation that
could foster a European federation, through the construction of railway
networks, drawing different nations closer together. Portuguese engineers
and politicians assimilated this ideology that was in the base of the
project of connecting Porto, Lisbon and sundry overseas territories to its
neighbouring countries and regions. However, this plan clashed against
opposing economic, political and diplomatic agendas of those nations.
Using the concept of technodiplomacy and the models of cross-borders
and transnational large technological systems (LTS), we aim to show how
the Saint-simonianist project of creation of civilizations of circulation was
hindered by the appearance of technodiplomatic obstacles. We hope to
contribute to the debate about transnational LTS.

In 1872 a dispute between Portugal and Britain in India regarding a customs nuisance
paved the way for a negotiation that culminated in the signature of a treaty between those
two nations for the regulation of their relations in that part of the world. In the discussion
(broadened to other issues besides customs), a railway from Goa to the heart of British India
became involved, but it rapidly became obvious that that commitment was as heartily sought
by Portugal, as it was rejected by Britain. In this paper we aim to analyse this diplomatic process
under the scope of technodiplomacy. We aim to show that the technical sublime inherent
to railways deeply influenced the negotiation and the ulterior application of the treaty
in Portuguese India. We hope to contribute to the debate about the fundamental cultural
importance of technology in the Portuguese society of the late 19th-century.

The centrality of the nuclear in Cold War politics has long been undis- puted. But while confrontation and competition between the blocs figure prominently in accounts of the atomic age, transsystemic coop- eration is only beginning to attract scholarly attention. Based on an analysis of Soviet collaboration with the United States and France in fast breeder reactor development and nuclear-powered water desali- nation, this article argues that in a changing international order, the red lines of Soviet nuclear sharing stopped to coincide with the bloc divide, and started to align ever more closely with the division line between nuclear haves and nuclear have-nots.

In the 1870s, Portugal transferred the public works program it was undertaking
on the mainland – in which railways played a decisive role – to its African
colonies of Angola and Mozambique. In this strategy, the United Kingdom was
an obvious partner, given the historical connection between both nations and
the geographical proximity between the colonies each country had in Africa.
However, British and Portuguese imperial agendas could easily clash, as both
London and Lisbon coveted the same areas of Africa. Hence, the initial and
apparent cooperation rapidly evolved to a situation of conflict. In this paper,
I aim to analyse three instances of dispute between Portugal and Britain about
colonial railways in Angola and Mozambique. I will use the methodological
tools of conflict resolution analysis in a historical perspective and the concept of
track-two diplomacy within the framework of technodiplomacy.

Before the opening of the first railways in its overseas domains of Angola, Mozambique, and India in the 1880s, Portugal was confronted with a series of proposals of a rather speculative nature to build railways in those territories. These projects, quite vague, speculative , and inserted in the techno-diplomatic game played between Portugal and the United Kingdom ended up by not seeing any light, marking rather, a period of learning for national authorities in what regards the railway's investment in the colonies. In this paper, we aim to analyse those proposals and explain why these plans were never built, considering the previous experience with railways' construction in metropolitan Portugal. To do so, we will look at primary sources of Portuguese (Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino and Arquivo Histórico-Diplomático) and British archives (The National Archives and British Library), that will be studied at the light of the model developed by Lopes Vieira for the study of the railway speculation in Portugal in 1840s and also under the concept of techno-diplomacy.

Antes da efetiva abertura das primeiras linhas-ferreas nos seus dominios ul-tramarinos de Angola, Mocambique e India na decada de 1880, Portugal foi confrontado com um conjunto de propostas de natureza especulativa para a construcao de caminhos-de-ferro nesses mesmos territorios. Esses projetos, vagos, especulativos e inseridos no jogo tecnodiplomatico entre Portugal e o Reino Unido, acabaram por nao se realizar, marcando um periodo de apren-dizagem por parte das autoridades nacionais no que respeitava ao investimento ferroviario nas colonias. Este artigo propoe-se a analisar essas propostas, tendo tambem em conta a previa experiencia ferroviaria na metropole, explicitando as razoes pelas quais nao se concretizaram. Para tal, recorreremos a fontes guardadas em arquivos portugueses (Arquivo Historico Ultrama-rino e Arquivo Historico-Diplomatico) e ingleses (The National Archives e British Library), exami-nadas a luz do exemplo descrito por Lopes Vieira para a especulacao ferroviaria ...

The workshop aims to understand the impact of global crises and natural disasters and catastrophes in the making of telecommunications and information industries. Co-currently it aims to explore the way the telecommunication and information technologies shaped the experience and governance of global events both at individual and social level. It aims to understand how different classes and social groups of different income and professional backgrounds experience(d) the events through the mediation of different communication technologies. How different cultures have developed different social practices and imaginaries in relation to communication technologies and how this impacted on the experience of the critical events.

Desde la finalización de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, ciencia y tecnología han comenzado a ocupar un lugar preponderante en la agenda de políticas públicas de los Estados, y a ser consideradas como elementos claves de poder, especialmente la tecnología nuclear. Sin embargo, esta
tecnología de usos duales no fue solo fuente de conflicto, sino que fue utilizada muchas veces como elemento de proyección de poder regional y global a través de la diplomacia atómica, práctica perteneciente al fenómeno más amplio conocido como Tecnodiplomacia. El presente
artículo propone analizar el rol que la tecnología nuclear jugó en la transformación de relaciones conflictivas entre Argentina y Brasil en vínculos cooperativos estratégicos, durante el siglo XX.
Since the end of World War II, science and technology have begun to have a prominent place in State policies agendas, and to be considered key power elements, especially nuclear technology. Nonetheless, this dual use technology was not perceived only as a source of conflict but also as a key component of global and regional projection through atomic diplomacy, a practice belonging to a wider phenomenon known as technodiplomacy. This article seeks to analyze the role played
by nuclear technology in the transformation of conflictive relations between Argentina and Brazil into strategic cooperative links during the twentieth century.