The Growth of Telecommunication in the Balkans before 1914

di Alexandre Kostov
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 5 (2000), p. 67

From the very beginning, the growth of telecommunication in the Balkans was marked by strong attempts at establishing international links, both towards Western Europe and towards the Near and the Far East. The introduction of the new communication system in the Balkans occurred just when the Crimean War broke out thanks to the financial and technological intervention of the Western Europe countries: so, one might well infer that military motivations were at the basis of the growth of telegraph networks in the Balkans. From a chronological point of view, the gap between the Balkans and Western Europe was not a significant one. This work reconstructs the laying of inland and submarine telegraph networks in the Balkans by stepping over the wars and the changes in national borders that took place as far as the first experiments in radiotelegraphy were made before WWI.