Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)
II. Die Wahrnehmungen von Raum / The perceptions of space - Robert Lee: Railways, space and imperialism
Robert Lee have her cake and eat it too. She wanted the convenience of railways, but not too close to her estates. And, as queen, she got what she wanted. In Europe and North America, the railway emerged out of changes in existing society. On the whole it was not something imposed by outsiders. Most of the elite in these parts of the world embraced the new technology - and the whole set of attitudes to space, commerce and life it represented - with enthusiasm. Elites who did not found themselves slipping into irrelevance. The coming of the railway age to Europe was neatly framed by the English Reform Act of 1832 and by the revolutions of 1848. These accomplished much the same end, bringing to power those who were comfortable with the new order of capitalism, commerce and rapid communications. This was true even where the revolutionaries of 1848 were defeated. For it tended to be men like Bismarck, who were comfortable with technological if not social change, who came to the top in the 1850s. In colonies and other countries far from Europe, it was a very different story. Here the railway generally was imposed by outsiders for the benefit of outsiders. This made the shock of the railway so much greater. Nowhere was this more so than in China, which had a highly developed civilisation, whose aesthetic and social system was quite incompatible with railway building. The results were the purchase and destruction of China’s first (illegal) railway in the 1870s, and then the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The Boxer Movement, in many respects, was fundamentally an anti-railway movement. Certainly the impact of the railway on towns and on the landscape was considerable. Photographs of places in China and southeast Asia taken before and after railways were built show just how thorough the transformation could be." And it was not just industrialisation or modernisation. It was Westernisation as well, a confrontation with the reality that one’s own civilisation no longer led the world. For the Chinese in particular, these realisations were deeply confronting. The ability of the Japanese and Siamese to take railway technology on board was in part an aesthetic as well as a practical reorientation of their societies. They came to accept the necessity of material as well as political Westernisation, for railways would change the shape and appearance of their cities and towns forever. And with their cit104 There are some fine examples of the contrast between pre-railway and post-railway Beijing in Wor- s w i c k , Clark Spence, Jonathan: Imperial China, Photographs 1850-1912. New York 1978, p. 42- 45.
