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I recommend Shashi Tharoor's "An Era of Darkness". The reason why the railways became so developed during the British Era is because the Crown promised up to 1
by sn41 6y ago
I recommend Shashi Tharoor's "An Era of Darkness".
The reason why the railways became so developed during the British Era is because the Crown promised up to 10 percent returns in many cases. So it was a speculative boom, with the cost underwritten by the miserably poor citizens of British India.
The mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has a lot of material on the railways boom, which occurred in England and in India during the 1840-1860s.
Many of the rail lines were also quite absurd. The first rail line in Kerala for example. Even 170 years later, there are no major population centres around. Why was this route chosen? To transport teak most economically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilambur%E2%80%93Shoranur_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilambur%E2%80%93Shoranur_line
https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/Nilambur,+Kerala/Shoranur,+Kerala/@11.0271926,75.9681033,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x3ba63b7644696f47:0x855ba2b7d1add177!2m2!1d76.2385793!2d11.2855356!1m5!1m1!1s0x3ba7c35467b938e5:0xaca6399c23caae7e!2m2!1d76.276381!2d10.7677457!3e0 https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/Nilambur,+Kerala/Shoranur,...
- contingencies 6y agoLovely area of Kerala though, and they produce the best chocolate I think I have ever had!
- sn41 6y agoI also have a lot of connections there, but it's just a very questionable choice. If they really cared about serving a large population, they would have connected Calicut to Palakkad (both of which were part of British Malabar).
- twic 6y agoIs that absurd? The first railway in the UK was built to transport coal most economically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railwa... The need to move masses of freight predates the need to move masses of commuters.
- sn41 6y agoIt's not absurd, but there is a lot of hypocrisy surrounding the British Raj especially with regards to how concerned they were with the welfare of the Indian subjects. There were a lot of good British administrators who were benevolent, and fond of India. And the legal system is a boon. But there were large patches of plain greed couched in philanthropic terms. A favorite quote of mine is George Orwell quoting E. M. Forster "Again, he [Gandhi] seems to have been quite free from that maniacal suspiciousness which, as E. M. Forster rightly says in A Passage to India, is the besetting Indian vice, as hypocrisy is the British vice." [1] [1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/reflections-on-gandhi/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
- twic 6y agoIndeed. I certainly don't mean to defend the British empire. The way i would frame this, though, is that the difference between the UK and India is only in how much the railway-builders and so on could get away with. They would have done the same to British people if they had had the chance.
- sn41 6y agoCouldn't agree more. There's nothing special about this country versus that country when it comes to inhuman behavior. I somehow am very disappointed at humanity. People who argue for peace, forgiveness and solidarity are often victimised - vide Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi and so on - and venomous populists are venerated as heroes.