The Infrastructure of Finance: A Material History of Speed and the Financial System in the British Empire, 1845–1908

Beginning roughly with the first railway bubble in 1844-1845, stock exchanges proliferated in Britain’s provinces as well as in its empire. Accelerating from the 1850s until the early 20th century, this network of stock exchanges was knitted together through the construction of a global web of telegraphic and telephonic lines. The introduction of these technologies is usually taken to show how the increased speed of communication and trading rationalized and integrated financial markets globally. This paper, however, argues that the electronic speed of finance in the mid-late nineteenth century introduced limiting constraints and politics to the operation of financial markets that were embodied in their new material infrastructure. The incorporation of electronic communications into the financial system necessitated a massive overhaul of the physical apparatus of that system. New lines between exchanges had to be laid and stock exchanges had to be constantly renovated to accommodate new technologies. But these new communications infrastructures were never neutral. Their construction initiated sharp contestations for the power to shape the financial communication system and who had access to it. This paper will track how, initially, the London Stock Exchange worked to create a communications infrastructure designed to limit the access of provincial and imperial exchanges to other more prominent global stock exchanges, like those in the United States and continental Europe. But, especially after the creation of the Exchange Telegraph Company in 1872, both private firms and small stock exchanges alike were able to develop alternative communications infrastructures that allowed them to combat the power and centrality of London. The London Stock Exchange responded with new, more concerted efforts to police and restrict trading and access to communications infrastructure, but their regulatory capacities were overwhelmed by a private communications system that they no longer could control.