Torsten Kathke

I am a historian and Americanist living in Cologne, Germany, with a doctorate in American Cultural History from LMU Munich (2013). My research focuses on the United States and Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I work as a lecturer at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies of Johannes-Gutenberg University, Mainz. From 2014–2016, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow and member of the research group “Economization of the Social” at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

My book “Wires That Bind: Nation, Region, and Technology in the American Southwest, 1854–1920” was published by Transcript in 2017. Thus, History!, a research blog I write, features commentary on history as well as on current events in historical perspective.

You can find me on social media as @torstenkathke, e.g. on Mastodon, Twitter, and Instagram.

Torsten Kathke
Wires That Bind
Nation, Region, and Technology in the Southwestern United States, 1854-1920

The arrival of telegraphy and railroads changed power relations throughout the world in the nineteenth century. In the Mesilla region of the American Southwest, it contributed to two distinct and rapid shifts in political and economic power from the 1850s to the 1920s. Torsten Kathke illustrates how the changes these technologies wrought everywhere could be seen at a much accelerated pace here. A local Hispano elite was replaced first by a Hispano-Anglo one, and finally a nationally oriented Anglo elite. As various groups tried to gain, hold, and defend power, the region became bound ever closer to the US economy and to the federal government.

Published by Transcript Verlag (Europe) and Columbia University Press (United States and elsewhere).

Available through Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Barnes and Noble, etc.