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
Railways, space and imperialism ies, so too their people were changed, in an unintended consequence. Traditional people, with loose concepts of time and work, made poor railway customers and were impossible as railway employees. In building railways, these states committed themselves to creating a class of at least semi-Westemised railway employees throughout their territories. For railways had a wide geographical spread, and their staff could not be confined to a small number of places. The implications for wider social and educational change are obvious. Nothing could stay the same in a town once the railway arrived. 5. Conclusion Thus, the spread of the railway beyond Europe and North America was a complex phenomenon. Space was transformed physically and psychologically. People’s lives were touched in unexpected ways. Its effects extended deeply into society and to most classes. The political results were also wider than is often realised. It was not merely a matter of railways being part of imperialism. That was important, but they had other political uses as well. Thus, the transformation of Asian states at the end of the nineteenth century was a universal phenomenon and part of a global change. It occurred in ‘traditional’ states as much as in colonies. One characteristic of this transformation was that the so-called traditional states increasingly modelled themselves on colonial states. Only the character of elites differed. In traditional states as much as in colonies, governments depended increasingly on Western experts and Western technology, instead of relying on feudal elites. In this process of state building and state-transformation, the railway was crucial. It was both a practical tool of state-building and even national integration, as well as a symbol of progress and a polity’s growing control over the environment and society. As such, this most pervasive of all the Western technologies then available, was embraced by Asian elites who wished to cement their control over society, reaffirm their legitimacy in the face of challenges first from colonialism and later from their own populations, and modernise their states. It was among the first of the Western tools of empire to be turned against the same Westerners who had brought it to Asia. The history of railway development in late nineteenth-century Asia, then, is a history of technology transfer with unintended consequences and beneficiaries. However, the end result of experimenting with railways was the transformation of society and the emer105
