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 Western norms. Old colonial states were transformed as much as states remaining under Asian rulers, while hybrid states (‘protectorates’) experienced similar transformations. The significant difference between these various types of states was for whose benefit these processes of technological innovation and state-modernisation were undertaken. In the independent states, the transformations were designed to strengthen existing elites, or at least parts of existing elites, sometimes at the expense of other parts of these elites. In old colonies, new, more rational and more ‘Western’ practises replaced the semi-traditional patterns of the past. Nowhere was this process more dramatic than the Philippines, where it even involved a new colonial power replacing the old. In the protectorates, old Asian elites were able to preserve elements of their traditional power and moral authority, but at the cost of losing control of the modem and dynamic parts of their economies and populations. Perhaps the most pervasive and visible, and certainly the most expensive of the technologies introduced at this time, was the railway. Few technologies demanded so thorough an assimilation of Western ideas of time, work, precision and economy as the railway. Moreover, the assimilation of these ideas was required not just by the senior management of the railway, but by its employees down to quite low levels, and even by its users. Railways, and the accompanying technology, the telegraph, gave states the ability to move personnel, armies, documents and ideas rapidly throughout their territories. It is no accident that it was the strongest Asian states which were the most dynamic builders of railways at this time, notably the reformed and modernised British and Dutch colonial states in India and Java. These were closely followed (and, in the case of Java, rapidly eclipsed) by the traditional Asian state where conflict among the elites had been most bitter and the consequent realignment of political power the most thorough - Japan. In the case of Africa, Western control began and ended later, so the dynamics were rather different in detail. Also, the traditional states were very much weaker than in Asia. Indeed, in many respects the strongest ‘traditional’ states in sub-Saharan Africa before the 1880s were also at least semi-Westemised. These were Portugal (or at least its fragile colonial outposts) and the sultanate of Zanzibar. This meant that in Africa railways were, in many cases, real determinants of political boundaries, and railway building became a means of staking out territorial claims. 95
