London's Global Reach?: Reuters News and Network, 1865, 1881, and 1914

In the fifty years before 1914, London was served by Reuters, the world's leading news agency. Reuters both led and reflected London's expanding interests in world affairs, so analysis of its news supply offers insights into London's situation as a late nineteenth-century world city. Saskia Sassen has defined global cities as forming a network with transnational producer services firms contracting with transnational corporations to supply the services that are necessary for their global businesses. This article asks whether Reuters offered worldwide coverage, operated as an imperial network, or functioned as a transnational producer services enterprise networking world cities. It does so by mapping the world news Reuters delivered to London newspapers using the telegraphic records of the Reuters Group Archive for sample news weeks in 1865, 1881, and 1914. Analysis reveals that Reuters was a nineteenth-century producer services firm offering transnational services organized by a web of enterprise and focused on a network of world cities. This suggests in turn that London may have been a global city before 1914.