Neither Nation nor Empire: Situating Shanghai Radio in a Global Technological Moment, 1922–25

In the period following World War I, societies grappled with the implications and necessity of new mass technologies such as radio. This article situates the institutionalization of radio within this synchronous "global technological moment," not within discrete national or imperial narratives like some scholarship. Examining the transnational experience of an individual and a city in this moment, the article critiques the idea of an exogenous globalization. From 1922 to 1925, entrepreneur E. G. Osborn founded radio stations across three different political formations in East Asia—imperial Japan, semicolonial Shanghai, and colonial Hong Kong. Focusing on Shanghai, this article uncovers how Osborn's radio station sparked a struggle for control between anticolonial nationalists, imperialist institutions, and a military concerned about its rivals' growing technological capabilities. Broadcasting thus reflected and amplified an unstable postwar world, whose contours were still under negotiation.