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No, it suggests that there was an optimal path around the world in 80 days. The geography of many regions would have made them more remote than the optimal path
by JustLurking2022 4y ago
No, it suggests that there was an optimal path around the world in 80 days. The geography of many regions would have made them more remote than the optimal path.
- jameshart 4y agoIn seriousness, the article’s final thesis is literally that steamships and trains and telegraphs broke the ‘month’ rule by bringing essentially the whole world inside the one month range, which is what enabled a ‘sun never sets’ empire and then broke empires in general. Around the World in 80 days is set almost exactly at that inflection point.
- PeterisP 4y agoThe geography of those many remote regions (e.g. the interior of Africa or Australia or parts of Asia) meant that they were not really governed by the empires - it's just that they were linked to the wider world through various port cities, and those were generally governed by some empire and within a month of its capital, so the value of their trade was captured tehre.