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
The late 1840s saw the beginnings of railroad colonialism in India, where, between 1845 and 1875, taxes levied on Indians guaranteed 5 percent returns on British investments of about £95 million in Indian railroads. “Public debts,” Hobson noted, “ripened in the colonies.” During these years, the East India Company inoculated its shareholders from risk through land grants and supplies of cheap labor alongside guarantees on investments, while claiming powers to supervise and control the railways. Railroads transformed India into a captive market for British capital. British manufacturers lobbied for state support of Indian railroads, to enable the shipping of mass-produced British textiles into the interior, pushing for cotton cultivation in western India in order to drive down U. S. cotton prices. After the end of the U. S. Civil War, British cotton manufacturers switched back from Indian short staple cotton to the long staple cotton of Alabama and Louisiana, prompting financial collapses in Bombay. Through 1924, colonial railroad policy in India stipulated the purchase of rails, locomotives, and nonspecialized track fittings from British manufacturers, providing a sphere for the circulation of idle British capital. Railway debts alone made up over half of Indian debt. While railways in India played a major role in the destruction of artisanal industries, especially in textiles, the colonial monopoly also arrested the emergence of machine and heavy industries in 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