Networks of Domination and Violence: Colonial Communication and Power

The dominant historical narrative often portrays communication networks as fostering democracy, freedom, and public discourse. These accounts, particularly those focused on the US and UK, tend to isolate the domestic histories of communication networks from their colonial functions. They emphasize their role in shaping public spheres at home while overlooking their use as instruments of empire. Our project challenges this narrative by investigating the colonial foundations and evolution of communication infrastructures, focusing on their entanglement with militarization, domination, and violence.

A crucial case study in this context is the air networks developed by British mandate authorities in Iraq following World War I. Despite its significance, air power remains under-theorized in media and communication studies. While scholars like John Durham Peters conceptualize air as a metaphor for dialogue and empathy in Speaking into the Air, my analysis examines the darker dimensions of air as a colonial communications assemblage. This assemblage comprised aeroplanes, wireless infrastructures, and aerial photography, alongside the labour that sustained them, the racial ideologies that justified their use, and the network of violent practices they enabled—from surveillance to targeted bombing. This assemblage was central to the British mandate system, a novel colonial regime of the 1920s, and its legacy persists into the 20th and 21st centuries, from the US-UK invasion of Iraq and drone warfare to Israel’s ongoing military strategies in Gaza.

The Colonial Communications Infrastructure in Iraq

By the early 20th century, Mesopotamia had become a contested space within Britain's imperial strategy, particularly as the Ottoman Empire declined and Germany expanded its influence in the region. Britain’s military occupation during World War I, starting in Basra and advancing to Baghdad and Mosul, increasingly relied on aircraft for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. Aerial photography became essential due to the lack of accurate maps in a region marked by diverse and often inhospitable terrains. British forces used aerial images to survey and measure landscapes, strategically positioning military infrastructure.

IMAGE 1: The Illustrated London News, August 1918.

In addition to aerial photography, the British integrated aircraft with wireless communication systems, which were more cost-effective and less vulnerable to disruption than wired telegraphs. Wireless links connected reconnaissance aircraft to ground forces, facilitating coordinated bombing and artillery strikes. These early experiments with air-communicative assemblages were celebrated for their efficiency in defeating enemy forces and were justified through racialized colonial narratives. British officials argued that air power had a “moral” effect on so-called "uncivilized" populations, who, they claimed, were easily subdued by the spectacle of aerial superiority.

Air Control as Colonial Governance

Following World War I, the Royal Air Corps was reorganized into the Royal Air Force (RAF), solidifying air power as an independent military force. Under Winston Churchill and Hugh Trenchard, air control emerged as a cost-effective method for governing colonial territories, particularly in Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan. Churchill advocated for air control as a superior alternative to traditional military governance, citing its lower logistical demands. Unlike conventional military control, which required ground troops, tanks, and telegraph networks, air control used wireless communication and a small fleet of aircraft to dominate entire regions at a fraction of the cost.

IMAGE 2: RAF Report by General Staff (RAF Museum London Archives, Trenchard Papers, Iraq, X0008-5370-003-005-0001, 1919).

The air control program was underpinned by racialised assessments of Iraq’s population. British authorities categorized Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and Jews based on their perceived resistance capabilities, shaping military strategies accordingly. In urban areas, Britain co-opted local elites into administrative and economic structures, while rural and desert regions—home to nomadic and semi-nomadic groups—were subjected to more violent forms of aerial control. The RAF played a decisive role in suppressing the 1920 Iraqi rebellion, cementing air control as a core feature of British colonial governance.

IMAGE 3: Ethnographic Map of Mosul Vilayet (The National Archives, CO 730/85, 1920).

Iraq was divided into three operational zones—Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra—each connected through an extensive wireless communication network of 18 stations. Unlike traditional telegraph systems, which could be sabotaged by local resistance, wireless networks allowed real-time coordination of military operations. Trenchard envisioned this infrastructure as part of a larger imperial network connecting Baghdad to Cairo, Malta, Haifa, Amman, and London, ensuring continuous British aerial surveillance and control.

IMAGE 4, Wireless Stations in Mesopotamia (The National Archives, AIR 5/249, 1921)

Surveillance, Bombing, and Psychological Warfare

RAF officials saw air control not merely as a logistical tool but as an instrument of psychological domination. Continuous aerial surveillance created a panoptic effect, fostering a climate of fear and compliance among local populations. The RAF also used aircraft to drop propaganda leaflets, reinforcing British authority. Political Officers visited villages by air, demonstrating Britain’s technological supremacy; those who resisted faced swift and devastating aerial bombardments.

In 1920, RAF bombings targeted entire villages, including civilians, livestock, and essential resources, as collective punishment for rebellion. Insurgents adapted by hiding in caves or moving at night, prompting the RAF to develop new countermeasures, such as nighttime reconnaissance and airships equipped for cave bombardment. Over time, British forces refined their strategies to maintain aerial dominance and pacify resistance.

Beyond counterinsurgency, aerial bombardment functioned as an economic tool of coercion. Villages that failed to pay taxes faced brutal airstrikes. British authorities framed these campaigns as necessary to suppress unrest, labelling resistance as terrorism or rebellion. Early reports detailed the number of women and children bombed, but the Colonial Office later directed such information to be omitted, sanitizing the record of air-control warfare. This period saw the institutionalization of aerial surveillance, targeted violence, and legal frameworks that justified colonial air power.

IMAGE 5: The Illustrated London News, August, 1918.

Legacies of Colonial Air Power

Air control, integrating surveillance, profiling, and aerial harassment, became a model for managing colonial populations. Notably, Churchill rejected proposals to use similar tactics against British workers, demonstrating how empire shaped distinctions between metropolitan and colonial governance. In Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s, the RAF sought to replicate the Mesopotamian model against Arab resistance to Zionist colonization. However, the mixed population of urban areas posed logistical challenges, leading to alternative forms of control.

These colonial airpower strategies persisted into the modern era. During the US-UK occupation of Iraq, drone surveillance and targeted airstrikes echoed earlier RAF operations. Israel’s colonial strategy in Palestine, including persistent drone surveillance and bombardments, similarly draws from colonial air-control models, reinforcing segregation, surveillance, and violent suppression.

By tracing the historical continuities between colonial air control and contemporary military technologies, our research underscores how communication infrastructures—far from being neutral instruments of connectivity—have functioned as tools of empire, repression, and violence. Understanding these legacies is crucial to decolonizing contemporary media and communication studies and recognizing the enduring impact of imperial networks of domination.

This is an excerpt from a presentation given by Burçe at ECREA Communication History at CERN in February 2025.