Railroad Colonialism
Turtle Island
The first phase of railroad colonialism began in 1812, lasting until 1855, primarily in North America and South Asia. The United States granted its first railroad charter, for a line linking the Delaware and Raritan Rivers, less than a month after the Battle of New Orleans. Over the years of railroad expansion, the United States would organize twenty-four states, half before the Civil War, the other half, prior to large-scale settlement, after the war. The vast bulk of the space claimed as domestic territory by the continental United States was incorporated during the era of railroad building.
The earliest technical labor for U. S. railroads originated in the U. S. Army. Amid a shortage in engineers, U. S. railroad companies turned to engineers from West Point, who surveyed more than twenty railroads between 1827 and 1838. Many of these engineers would leave the army to work directly for railroad companies, some of them moving on to supervise railroad construction in other empires. The U. S. Army is one place to look for the rise of management bureaucracies and administrative hierarchies, both understood as hallmarks of the industrial corporation. The history of the corporation cannot be separated from the history of colonial warfare. By the early 1840s, amidst debates about the support of frontier garrisons, railway promoters in the United States began sketching out railway networks for the occupation of Indigenous lands, blending military and real estate logics. Railroad promoters anticipated the exchange value of Indigenous lands, even before the onset of colonial jurisdiction.[1]
India
Militarism
Effects
Sources
- ↑ Karuka, M. (2019). Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (1st ed.). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvd1c7m4