Empire and Communications

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The latest edition of Harold Innis's Empire and Communications.

Empire and Communications, is a book published in 1950 by University of Toronto professor Harold Innis. It is based on six lectures Innis delivered at Oxford University in 1948.^[1] The series, known as the Beit Lectures, was dedicated to exploring British imperial history. Innis however, decided to undertake a sweeping historical survey of how communications media influence the rise and fall of empires. He traced the effects of media such as stone, clay, papyrus, parchment and paper from ancient to modern times.^[2]

Innis argued that the "bias" of each medium either toward space or toward time helps determine the nature of the civilization in which that medium dominates. "Media that emphasize time are those that are durable in character such as parchment, clay and stone," he writes in his introduction.^[3] These media tend to favour decentralization. "Media that emphasize space are apt to be less durable and light in character, such as papyrus and paper."^[4] These media generally favour large, centralized administrations. Innis believed that to persist in time and to occupy space, empires needed to strike a balance between time-biased and space-biased media.^[5] Such a balance is likely to be threatened however, when monopolies of knowledge exist favouring some media over others.^[6]

Empire and Communications examines the impact of media such as stone, clay, papyrus and the alphabet on the empires of Egypt and Babylonia. It also looks at the oral tradition in ancient Greece; the written tradition and the Roman Empire; the influence of parchment and paper in medieval Europe and the effects of paper and the printing press in modern times.

[edit] Chapter 1. Introduction

Harold Innis's highly-condensed prose style, in which he frequently ranges over many centuries and several key ideas in one or two sentences, can make his writing in Empire and Communications difficult to understand. Biographer Paul Heyer recommends that readers use Innis's introduction as a helpful guide.^[7]

Harold Innis noted that papyrus documents enabled Rome to administer its huge empire.

[edit] Empire, bias and balance

In his introduction, Innis promises to examine the significance of communications in a small number of empires. "The effective government of large areas," he writes, "depends to a very important extent on the efficiency of communication."^[8] He argues for example, that light and easily-transported papyrus enabled Rome to govern a large, centralized empire. For Innis, papyrus is associated with the political and administrative control of space. It, therefore, is a space-biased medium. Parchment, dominant after the breakup of the Roman Empire, was a durable medium used for hand copying manuscripts in medieval monasteries. For Innis, parchment favours decentralization and is associated with the religious control of time. It, therefore, is a time-biased medium. Innis argues that in order to last, large-scale political organizations such as empires must balance biases toward time and space. "They have tended to flourish under conditions in which civilization reflects the influence of more than one medium and in which the bias of one medium towards decentralization is offset by the bias of another medium towards centralization."^[9]

[edit] Writing, printing and speech

Innis divides the history of the empires and civilizations he will examine into two periods, one for writing and the other for printing. "In the writing period we can note the importance of various media such as the clay tablet of Mesopotamia, the papyrus roll in the Egyptian and in the Graeco-Roman world, parchment codex in the late Graeco-Roman world and the early Middle Ages, and paper after its introduction in the Western world from China."^[10] Innis notes that he will concentrate on paper as a medium in the printing period along with the introduction of paper-making machinery at the beginning of the 19th century and the use of wood pulp in the manufacture of paper after 1850.^[11]

He is quick to add however, that it would be presumptuous to conclude that writing alone determined the course of civilizations. Historians naturally focus on writing because it endures. "We are apt to overlook the significance of the spoken word," he writes, "and to forget that it has left little tangible remains."^[12] For Innis, this tendency poses a problem. "It is scarcely possible for generations disciplined in the written and the printed tradition to appreciate the oral tradition."^[13] Therefore, the media biases of one civilization make understanding other peoples difficult, if not impossible.

"A change in the type of medium implies a change in the type of appraisal and hence makes it difficult for one civilization to understand another." As an example, Innis refers to our tendency to impose a modern conception of time on past civilizations. "With the dominance of arithmetic and the decimal system, dependent apparently on the number of fingers or toes, modern students have accepted the linear measure of time," he writes. "The dangers of applying this procrustean device in the appraisal of civilizations in which it did not exist illustrate one of numerous problems."^[14]

Innis also contrasts the strikingly different effects of writing and speaking. He argues that "writing as compared with speaking involves an impression at the second remove and reading an impression at the third remove. The voice of a second-rate person is more impressive than the published opinion of superior ability.^[15]

[edit] Chapter 2. Egypt: From stone to papyrus

Harold Innis traces the evolution of ancient Egyptian dynasties and kingdoms in terms of their use of stone or papyrus as dominant media of communication. His outline of Egyptian civilization is a complex and highly-detailed analysis of how these media, along with several other technologies, affected the distribution of power in society.

[edit] Influence of the Nile

A funerary stele from ancient Egypt's Middle Kingdom. Innis believed that hieroglypics engraved in stone originally perpetuated the divine power of Egyptian kings.

Innis begins, as other historians do, with the crucial importance of the Nile as a formative influence on Egyptian civilization. The river provided the water and fertile land needed for agricultural production in a desert region.^[16] Innis writes that the Nile therefore, "acted as a principle of order and centralization, necessitated collective work, created solidarity, imposed organizations on the people, and cemented them in a society."^[17] This observation is reminiscent of Innis's earlier work on the economic influence of waterways and other geographical features in his book, The Fur Trade in Canada, first published in 1930.^[18] However, in Empire and Communications, Innis extends his economic analysis to explore the influence of the Nile on religion, associating the river with the sun god, Ra, creator of the universe. In a series of intellectual leaps, Innis asserts that Ra's power was vested in an absolute monarch whose political authority was reinforced by specialized astronomical knowledge. Such knowledge was used to produce the calendar which could predict the Nile's yearly floods.^[19]

[edit] Stone, hieroglyphics and absolute monarchs

As the absolute monarchy extended its influence over Egypt, a pictorial hieroglyphic writing system was invented to express the idea of royal immortality.^[20] According to Innis, the idea of the divine right of autocratic monarchs was developed from 2895 BC to 2540 BC. "The pyramids," Innis writes, "carried with them the art of pictorial representation as an essential element of funerary ritual." The written word on the tomb, he asserts, perpetuated the divine power of kings.^[21]

Innis suggests that the decline of the absolute monarchy after 2540 BC may have been related to the need for a more accurate calendar based on the solar year. He suggests that priests may have developed such a calendar increasing their power and authority.^[22] After 2000 BC, peasants, craftsmen and scribes obtained religious and political rights. "The profound disturbances in Egyptian civilization," Innis writes "involved in the shift from absolute monarchy to more democratic organization coincided with a shift in emphasis on stone as a medium of communication or as a basis of prestige, as shown in the pyramids, to an emphasis on papyrus."^[23]

[edit] Papyrus and the power of scribes

Innis traces the influence of the newer medium of papyrus on political power in ancient Egypt. The growing use of papyrus led to the replacement of cumbersome hieroglyphic scripts by cursive or hieratic writing. Rapid writing styles made administration more efficient and highly-trained scribes became part of a privileged civil service.^[24] Innis writes however, that the replacement of one dominant medium by another led to upheaval.

The shift from dependence on stone to dependence on papyrus and the changes in political and religious institutions imposed an enormous strain on Egyptian civilization. Egypt quickly succumbed to invasion from peoples equipped with new instruments of attack. Invaders with the sword and the bow and long-range weapons broke through Egyptian defence, dependent on the battle-axe and the dagger. With the use of bronze and possibly iron weapons, horses and chariots, Syrian Semitic peoples under the Hyksos or Shepherd kings captured and held Egypt from 1660 to 1580 BC.^[25]

Hyksos rule lasted about a century until the Egyptians drove them out.^[26] Innis writes that the invaders had adopted hieroglyphic writing and Egyptian customs, "but complexity enabled the Egyptians to resist." The Egyptians may have won their victory using horses and light chariots acquired from the Libyans.^[27]

[edit] Empire and the one true god

Innis writes that the military organization that expelled the Hyksos enabled the Egyptians to establish and expand an empire that included Syria and Palestine, and that eventually reached the Euphrates. Egyptian administrators used papyrus and a postal service to run the empire, but adopted cuneiform as a more efficient script. The pharaoh Akhnaton tried to introduce Aten, the solar disk as the one true god, a system of worship that would provide a common ideal for the whole empire. But the priests and the people resisted "a single cult in which duty to the empire was the chief consideration."^[28] Priestly power, Innis writes, resulted from religious control over the complex and difficult art of writing. The monarch's attempts to maintain an empire extended in space were defeated by a priestly monopoly over knowledge systems concerned with time --- systems that began with the need for accurate predictions about when the Nile would overflow its banks.^[29] Innis argues that priestly theocracy gradually cost Egypt its empire. "Monopoly over writing supported an emphasis on religion and the time concept, which defeated efforts to solve the problem of space."^[30]

[edit] Chapter 3. Babylonia: The origins of writing

Clay tablet with Sumerian cuneiform script listing gods in order of seniority, 2400-2200 BC

In this chapter, Innis outlines the history of the world's first civilizations in Mesopotamia. He starts with the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but as the history unfolds, his discussion extends to large parts of the modern Middle East. Biographer Paul Heyer's warning that Innis's work can be challenging applies to this three thousand year history. Innis's condensed, elliptical prose demands careful reading as he traces the origins of writing from clay tablet and cuneiform script to the efficient Phoenician alphabet written on parchment and papyrus.^[31] Along the way, Innis comments on many aspects of the ancient Middle Eastern empires, including power struggles between priests and kings, the evolution of military technologies and the development of the Hebrew Bible.

[edit] History begins at Sumer

Innis begins by observing that unlike in Egypt where calculating the timing of the Nile's flooding was a source of power, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia were used for irrigation. Therefore the ability to measure time precisely was somewhat less critical. Nevertheless, as in Egypt, the small city-states of Sumer depended on the rivers and so, the cycles of agricultural production were organized around them.^[32] The rivers also provided communications materials. In Egypt, the Nile's papyrus became a medium for writing while in Mesopotamia, the rivers yielded the alluvial sediments the Sumerians used to fashion the clay tablets on which they inscribed their wedge-shaped, cuneiform script.^[33] Their earliest writing recorded agricultural accounts and economic transactions.^[34]

Innis points out that the tablets were not well suited to pictographic writing because making straight lines "tended to pull up the clay." Therefore Sumerian scribes used a cylindrical reed stylus to stamp or press wedges and lines on the moist tablet. Scribes gradually developed cuneiform signs to represent syllables and the sounds of the spoken language.^[35] Innis writes that as a heavy material, clay was not very portable and so was not generally suited for communication over large areas. Cuneiform inscription required years of training overseen by priests. Innis contends therefore, that as a writing medium, clay tended to favour decentralization and religious control.^[36]

[edit] From city-states to empires

Innis suggests that religious control in Sumer became a victim of its own successes. "The accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of priests and the temple organizations," he writes, "was probably followed by ruthless warfare between city-states."^[37] The time-bound priests, unskilled in technological change and the military arts, lost power to spatially-oriented kings intent on territorial expansion. Around 2350 BC, the Sumerians were conquered by their northern, Semitic neighbours the Akkadians. Under Sargon the Great, the empire expanded to include extensive territories reaching northwest as far as Turkey and west to the Mediterranean.^[38] Thus begins the rise and fall of a series of empires over approximately two thousand years. Innis mentions many of them, but focuses more attention on innovations that facilitated their growth. These include the advancement of civil law under Hammurabi, the development of mathematics including fixed standards of weights and measures, as well as the breeding of horses that combined speed with strength and that, along with three-man chariots, helped deliver spectacular military victories to the Assyrians.^[39]

[edit] Alphabet, empire and trade

The Phoenecian alphabet. The Phoenecians were sailors and traders who travelled widely taking their versatile alphabet with them.

In discussing the advent and spread of the alphabet, Innis refers to what he sees as the subversive relationship between those at the centre of civilizations and those on their fringes or margins. He argues that monopolies of knowledge develop at the centre only to be challenged and eventually overthrown by new ideas or techniques that take shape on the margins.^[40] Thus, the Phoenician alphabet, a radically-simplified writing system, undermined the elaborate hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts overseen by priestly elites in Egypt and Babylonia. "The Phoenicians had no monopoly of knowledge," Innis writes, "[which] might hamper the development of writing."^[41] As a trading people, the Phoenicians needed "a swift and concise method of recording transactions."^[42] The alphabet with its limited number of visual symbols to represent the primary elements of human speech was well suited to trade. "Commerce and the alphabet were inextricably interwoven, particularly when letters of the alphabet were used as numerals."^[43] The alphabet, combined with the use of parchment and papyrus, Innis argues, had a decentralizing effect favouring cities and smaller nations over centralized empires.^[44] He suggests that improved communication, made possible by the alphabet, enabled the Assyrians and the Persians to administer large empires in which trading cities helped offset concentrations of power in political and religious organizations.^[45]

[edit] Alphabet, the Hebrews and religion

Innis sketches the influence of the alphabet on the Hebrews in the marginal territory of Palestine. The Hebrews combined oral and written traditions in their scriptures.^[46] Innis points out that they had previously acquired key ideas from the Egyptians. "The influence of Egypt on the Hebrews," he writes, "was suggested in the emphasis on the sacred character of writing and on the power of the word which when uttered brought about creation itself. The word is the word of wisdom. Word, wisdom, and God were almost identical theological concepts."^[47] The Hebrews distrusted images. For them, words were the true source of wisdom. "The written letter replaced the graven image as an object of worship."^[48] In a typically complex passage, Innis writes:

"Denunciation of images and concentration on the abstract in writing opened the way for advance from blood relationship to universal ethical standards and strengthened the position of the prophets in their opposition to absolute monarchical power. The abhorrence of idolatry of graven images implied a sacred power in writing, observance of the law, and worship of the one true God."^[49]

The alphabet enabled the Hebrews to record their rich oral tradition in poetry and prose. "Hebrew has been described as the only Semitic language before Arabic to produce an important literature characterized by simplicity, vigour and lyric force. With other Semitic languages it was admirably adapted to the vivid, vigorous description of concrete objects and events."^[50] Innis traces the influence of various strands in scriptural writing suggesting that the combination of these sources strengthened the movement toward monotheism.^[51]

In a summary passage, Innis explores the wide-ranging influence of the alphabet in ancient times. He argues that it enabled the Assyrians and Persians to expand their empires, allowed for the growth of trade under the Arameans and Phoenicians and invigorated religion in Palestine. As such, the alphabet provided a balance. "An alphabet became the basis of political organization through efficient control of territorial space and of religious organization through efficient control over time in the establishment of monotheism."^[52]

[edit] Chapter 4. Greece and the oral tradition

"Greek civilization," Innis writes, "was a reflection of the power of the spoken word."^[53] In this chapter, he explores how the vitality of the spoken word helped the ancient Greeks create a civilization that profoundly influenced all of Europe. Greek civilization differed in significant ways from the empires of Egypt and Babylonia. Innis biographer John Watson notes that those preceding empires "had revolved around an uneasy alliance of absolute monarchs and scholarly theocrats."^[54] The monarchs ruled by force while an elite priestly class controlled religious dogma through their monopolies of knowledge over complex writing systems. "The monarch was typically a war leader whose grasp of the concept of space allowed him to expand his territory," Watson writes, "incorporating even the most highly articulated theocracies. The priests specialized in elaborating conceptions of time and continuity."^[55] Innis argues that the Greeks struck a different balance, one based on "the freshness and elasticity of an oral tradition" that left its stamp on Western poetry, drama, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, science and mathematics.^[56]

[edit] Socrates, Plato and the spoken word

Detail of the painting The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David.

Innis begins by examining Greek civilization at its height in the 5th century BC. He points out that the philosopher Socrates (c. 470 BC–399 BC) "was the last great product and exponent of the oral tradition."^[57] Socrates taught using a question and answer technique that produced discussion and debate. His student, Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC), elaborated on these Socratic conversations by writing dialogues in which Socrates was the central character. This dramatic device engaged readers in the debate while allowing Plato to search for truth using a dialectical method or one based on discussion.^[58] "The dialogues were developed," Innis writes "as a most effective instrument for preserving [the] power of the spoken word on the written page."^[59] He adds that Plato's pupil, Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), regarded the Platonic dialogues as "half-way between poetry and prose."^[60] Innis argues that Plato's use of the flexible oral tradition in his writing enabled him to escape the confines of a rigid philosophical system. "Continuous philosophical discussion aimed at truth. The life and movement of dialectic opposed the establishment of a finished system of dogma."^[61] This balance between speech and prose also contributed, Innis writes, to the immortality of Plato's work.^[62]

For Innis, the fall of Athens to Sparta in 404 BC and the trial and execution of Socrates for corrupting Athenian youth were symptoms of the collapse of the older oral culture. That culture had sustained a long poetic tradition, but Plato attacked poetry as a teaching device and expelled poets from his ideal republic. According to Innis, Plato and Aristotle developed prose in defence of a new culture in which gods and poets were subordinated to philosophical and scientific inquiry.^[63]

[edit] The Greek alphabet

Innis notes that the early Mycenaean Greeks of the Bronze Age developed their own styles of communication because they escaped the cultural influence of the Minoans they had conquered on the island of Crete. "The complexity of the script of Minoan civilization and its relative restriction to Crete left the Greeks free to develop their own traditions."^[64] Innis adds that the growth of a strong oral tradition reflected in Greek epic poetry also fostered resistance to the dominance of other cultures. This led the Greeks to take over and modify the Phoenician alphabet possibly around the beginning of the 7th century BC.^[65] The Greeks adapted this 24-letter, Semitic alphabet which consisted only of consonants to their rich oral tradition by using some of its letters to represent vowel sounds. Innis writes that the vowels in each written word "permitted the expression of fine distinctions and light shades of meaning."^[66] The classics professor, Eric Havelock, whose work influenced Innis, makes a similar point when he argues that this alphabet enabled the Greeks to record their oral literary tradition with a "wealth of detail and depth of psychological feeling" absent in other Near Eastern civilizations with more limited writing systems.^[67] Innis himself quotes scholar Richard Jebb's claim that the Greek language "'responds with happy elasticity to every demand of the Greek intellect...the earliest work of art created by the spontaneous working of the Greek mind.'"^[68]

[edit] Poetry, politics and the oral tradition

"The power of the oral tradition," Innis writes, "implied the creation of a structure suited to its needs."^[69] That structure consisted of the metres and stock phrases of epic poetry which included the Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey. The epics were sung by professional minstrels who pleased audiences by reshaping the poems to meet the needs of new generations. Innis points out that music was central to the oral tradition and the lyre accompanied the performance of the epic poems.^[70] He argues that the Homeric poems reflected two significant developments. The first was the rise of an aristocratic civilization which valued justice and right action over the traditional ties of kinship. The second was the humanization of the Greek gods whose limited powers encouraged belief in rational explanations for the order of things.^[71] "Decline of belief in the supernatural led to the explanation of nature in terms of natural causes," Innis writes. "With the independent search for truth, science was separated from myth."^[72]

Head of the poet Sappho.

Gradually, the flexible oral tradition gave rise to other kinds of poetry. Innis notes that these new kinds of literature "reflected the efficiency of the oral tradition in expressing the needs of social change."^[73] Hesiod wrote about agricultural themes, becoming the first spokesman for common people.^[74] Innis writes that his poems were produced "by an individual who made no attempt to conceal his personality".^[75] In the seventh century BC, Archilochos took poetry a step further contributing to breaking down the heroic code of epic poetry.^[76] Innis suggests he responded to a rising public opinion while historian J.B. Bury describes him as venting his feelings freely and denouncing his enemies.^[77] Innis argues that these changes in poetic style and form coincided with the replacement of Greek kingdoms by republics in the 8th and 7th centuries BC.^[78] Finally, he mentions the development of shorter, lyric poetry that could be intensely personal as shown in the work of Sappho. This profusion of short personal lyrics likely coincided with the spread of writing and the increasing use of papyrus from Egypt.^[79]

[edit] Greek science and philosophy

Innis credits the oral tradition with fostering the rise of Greek science and philosophy. He argues that when combined with the simplicity of the alphabet, the oral tradition prevented the development of a highly-specialized class of scribes and a priestly monopoly over education. Moreover, unlike the Hebrews, the Greeks did not develop written religious texts. "The Greeks had no Bible with a sacred literature attempting to give reasons and coherence to the scheme of things, making dogmatic assertions and strangling science in infancy."^[80] Innis contends that the flexibility of the oral tradition encouraged the introduction of a new medium, mathematics. Thales of Miletus may have discovered trigonometry. He also studied geometry and astronomy, using mathematics as "a means of discarding allegory and myth and advancing universal generalizations."^[81] Thus, mathematics gave rise to philosophical speculation. The map maker, Anaximander also sought universal truths becoming "the first to write down his thoughts in prose and to publish them, thus definitely addressing the public and giving up the privacy of his thought."^[82] According to Innis, this use of prose "reflected a revolutionary break, an appeal to rational authority and the influence of the logic of writing."^[83]

[edit] From Chapter 6: Paper and the Printing Press

[edit] Recent critical opinion

[edit] See also

• Harold Innis's communications theories
• Harold Innis
• Time- and space-bias
• Monopolies of knowledge

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Bury, J.B. (undated) A History of Greece: To the Death of Alexander the Great. New York: The Modern Library. OCLC 71398015
• Havelock, Eric. (1986) The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-04382-1
• Heyer, Paul. (2003) Harold Innis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. ISBN 0-7425-2484-1
• O'Brien, Patrick K., general editor. (1999) Atlas of World History. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-521567-2
• Roberts, J.M. (1992) History of the World. Oxford: Helicon Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-09-175392-9
• Watson, Alexander, John. (2006) Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-3916-2

[edit] Bibliography

• Innis, Harold. (2007) Empire and Communications. Toronto: Dundurn Press. ISBN 1-55002-662-3
• Innis Harold. (1951) The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. OCLC 4128437
• Innis, Harold. (1970) The Fur Trade in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6001-3

[edit] Further reading

• James, T.G.H. (1979) An Introduction to Ancient Egypt. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers. ISBN 0-06-430196-6
• Jean, Georges. (1992) Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts. Translated from the French by Jenny Oates. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-2893-0
• Man, John. (2001) Alpha Beta: How Our Alphabet Shaped the Western World. London: Headline Book Publishing. ISBN 0-7472-6447-3
• Martin, Henri-Jean. (1994) The History and Power of Writing. Translated from the French by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-50836-6