Introduction: RailwayImperialism

Ronald E. Robinson

Industrialized Europe cast its imperial influence over much of a still agrarianworld in the half century before 1914 by building railways in other people'scountries. Their grand central stations in Gothic or Romanesque cathedralstyle are the monuments. The locomotive had already proved its remarkablecapacity for joining local and national economies in growth in Europe andthe United States, and once the trunk lines had been completed at homewith profits, railway mania spread abroad. Investing heavily in foreign andcolonial lines, private capitalists, especially the British, integrated countryafter country into the international economy as primary producers. By 1907trains were running along some 168,000 miles of tracks outside Europe andthe United States and the construction capital investment was almost £1.5billion.1 Meanwhile, the capacity of railroads for absorbing small states intoempires fascinated Europe's geo-strategists. Bismarck had shown what theycon Id do in hauling German principalities into the Prussian empire; theirability to combine military forces at a single point had been proved by hisgenerals in beating the French at Sedan. Projecting rival imperial strategiesalong steel rails long before they were laid, the Powers soon used railwayloans and concessions to stake out spheres of influence in other continentsand cajole their rulers into subordinate alliance.2

Various theories associating the politics of extending empire with thepi ivate economics of expanding capitalism are debated in an effort to explainthe imperial dynamics of the age but, in reality, these two movements werecombined and projected largely in a third dimension, which has often beent u k e i i lor granted in imperial accounts.3 A revolution in international trans-

2 Railway Imperialism

port was required to carry them to their destinations on such a scale. Thelocomotive, along with the steamship and telegraph, shrank time and spacewithin and between regions and seemed to bring almost everywhere withinstriking distance of Europe and lend to it new economic and strategic sig-nificance. The railroads and canals that engineers and navvies constructedwere celebrated as feats of universal progress.

Railway-building from a Eurocentric viewpoint served as an instrumentof informal empire-building; in that sense it was a function of Europeanexpansion. The experimental notion of "railway imperialism" suggests thatthe railroad was not only the servant but also the principal generator ofinformal empire; in this sense imperialism was a function of the railroad.Between the operations of private capital and imperial strategy, the transferof high transport technology had a certain freewheeling momentum of itsown. Lord Salisbury, the cleverest of British expansionists, defined theessence of the idea in 1871 when he predicted: "small kingdoms are markedout by the destinies of the world for destruction. . . . The great organizationsand greater means of locomotion of the present day mark out the future tobe one of great empires."4

The imperial propensities of locomotion were demonstrated on a vast scalein the era of transcontinental lines and continental partitions that followed.By rail, for example, the British Raj rivetted military control on the Indiansubcontinent and defended its northern frontiers against Russian lines ap-proaching from the Caspian Sea and Tashkent, a conflict which led the twoPowers to divide much of central Asia and Persia into exclusive railway zonesby 1907.5 Lines extending from Berlin, Vienna, and Constantinople into theBalkans did much to bring about partition there, while the projection of thetrans-Siberian line to the Pacific, together with that of the Berlin-Constan-tinople line to Baghdad, drove the Powers to partition the Chinese andOttoman empires with exclusive railroad rights.6 In these instances Europeangovernments conscripted private railway capital into the service of imperialstrategy. The "great game" in Asia was being played in earnest along lineswhich, as they extended from their domestic networks, directly connectedimperialism in Asia with national defense in Europe.

In a very different context the dividers of tropical Africa also had trans-continental routes in mind, though they were mostly taking options onremote possibilities. A great deal of the scramble here ran on connectingthe great lakes and rivers overland by rail, and on prospectuses that promisedor threatened to link the center of Africa to ports and monopolize the im-aginary trade of unknown hinterlands, whether from Cape to Cairo, fromAlgeria or Tunis across the Sahara to Kano or Lake Chad, or by joining theupper Senegal and Niger rivers with Dakar and Timbuktu.7 These constructs,for the most part, were too risky for the private investor, of too little strategicimportance to attract more than dribs and drabs of imperial subsidy; theonly serious strategic railway projector in tropical Africa was perhaps lord

Introduction 3

Salisbury, who, from Whitehall at taxpayers' expense, directed the buildingof the Uganda line with the idea of frustrating a chimerical French threatto British control over the Suez route to the East.8

If the scramble for Africa was largely a product of lines envisioned onmaps, the impact of the railway on sub-imperial rivalry in South Africa wasreal enough. Colonies and republics competing on rival lines for control ofthe subcontinent's future found that they all terminated in the Second Anglo-Boer War.9 Thereafter, the need to keep lines solvent and create a nationalsystem played a great part in drawing the South African colonies into theUnion in 1909, as it had done in confederating British North America halfa century earlier.10

These examples of various connections between railroad and empire-building suggest that Salisbury was right in thinking of the locomotive asthe main engine of imperialism. It was certainly a major cause of imperialrivalry; the mere rumor of a project in a sensitive area could bring itsterritorial future up for auction at international conference tables. The rail-road as such had enormous territorial implications; it normally required thebacking of the host government, and a territorial concession with financialguarantees was usually needed to exclude competing lines, ensure profit,and attract the necessary long-term investment. In Asia and Africa, more-over, imperial intervention was often called for to stabilize political condi-tions for successful railway operations. Steel rails had a capacity fortransforming the societies through which they ran and for spreading imperialinfluence in their domestic affairs, which often provoked anti-imperial re-actions and involved European interests in local crises. The locomotiveclearly had a unique propensity for integrating and annexing territory, formonopolizing its resources, and for preempting the future of great stretchesof country. All these implications, it is suggested, gave rise to a distinctivetype of railway imperialism, which added a new dimension to Europeanexpansion and projected it to a higher pitch of intensity over a vastly extendedrtnge.

locomotives generated informal imperial influence in preindustrial soci-eties, whether or not lines were supported by the political intervention ofan imperial power. In the European-settled parts of the world, there werevery few local communities who were not desperate for a line to bring lifeand prosperity to their towns, while every government wanted railways fori t s national development. Progressive elites in Asia and Africa also were wellaware that a country without trains was unarmed and likely to remain poorand incapable of modern administration; just as without a telegraph, it wasi leaf. But importing the technology was expensive and too risky for localmpitalists to undertake; lines rarely paid until an entire system was com-pleted, and even then dividends were often far to seek; payable traffic waitedon the economic growth a line generated, which took far longer to maturel l i an it took to open the railway. As London, joined later by Paris and Berlin,

4 Railway Imperialism

remained the only source of long-term risk capital, prolonged overdrafts onthe world's bankers were required.11 The British Imperial Governmentrarely took a financial share in railway enterprises in foreign countries orself-governing colonies; they were typically joint ventures between Euro-pean private lenders and states on other continents who guaranteed a fixedinterest on the security of their own revenues. These governments, strug-gling to balance their budgets while financing new lines and subsidizingothers to keep them in operation, fell into financial dependence loan byloan. Their lands and taxes were mortgaged to the hilt for railways that were

also in pawn.The dependence of railroad-building countries on European stock ex-

changes imposed certain constraints on their internal affairs. The privateinvestor in London was unlikely to subscribe to the next flotation if theborrower's domestic or tariff policies damaged the lender's free trading in-terests or offended his national sentiments. With an eye to return of capital,investors naturally favored lines connecting promising pastoral and agricul-tural areas to ports and bringing them into export production. The expansionof export-import interests in turn influenced the domestic politics of theborrowing country in favor of affiliation with its chief imperial financier andtrading partner. In the quasi-colonial societies of European origin, railwayloans often made the difference between boom and slump. They openednew lands for settlement, attracted more immigrants from Europe, andaccelerated colonization. They were used as agents of nation-building as wellas empire-building. They set local capital and labor at work by providingthe infrastructure of public utilities, and the benefits spread widely through-out the internal political economy. Railway contracts may have been unequalbut they were not that unequal; they offered patronage to politicians, marketsfor farmers, profits for land speculators, fees for lawyers, employment fortown workers, and convenient travel for the general public. And for thisreason the politics of these countries to a greater or lesser extent became"railway politics." The politicians who promised to bring lines through mostconstituencies tended to win most popular support, though they lost it againwhen the flow of railway capital dried up.

All these joint interests of lenders and borrowers in financing railroadsexerted two powerful influences on the internal political economy. In thefirst place, locomotives tended to pull their economic growth into comple-mentarity with European industry and their politics in favor of free trade;in the second, they spread political affiliations with the lending countrythrough large sections of the quasi-colonial economy. The railroad, up to1914, was thus a main generator of those insidious partnerships of imperial,financial, and commercial interests that go into the making of "informal"

empires.Whose empires they were, however, is open to question. The host gov-

ernment had to agree with investors, and in some instances, the imperial

Introduction 5

government, before lines could be constructed, and each depended to someextent on the good will of the others. Host states wanted lines that wouldpromote national development and, as they were often free to take or leaveloans, they usually had the last word in deciding which lines should be builtand under what conditions they should operate. The investors, for their part,wanted lines that would secure a safe return on capital, often regardless ofthe imperial consequences, while the Powers, if they were involved, pro-moted lines that would serve imperial strategy. Among these divergentnational, financial, and imperial considerations, railway contracts were struckon the overlap of mutual advantages. They were thus characteristic of thecollaborative bargains of informal imperialism, but the extent to which theyspread political ties with extending empire or unequal economic partnershipswith expanding international economy depended on who decided wherelines should run, what priorities should be served, and whether the capitallent had imperial strings attached. A good way of uncovering the workingof informal empire through local collaborators in the age of imperialism istherefore to study the original history of railway-building. By the same token,the nature of railway imperialism in the countries more or less imperializedcan be seen in the design of their early trunk lines.

This volume accordingly may be regarded as a set of experiments withthe idea of railway imperialism. Contributors account for the origins of mainlines in several independent and self-governing countries, and their essaysare of great interest as such. At the same time, they reflect on the imperialand anti-imperial effects of railways whose rails traced the divergent pathsof expanding capitalism, imperial strategy, and modernizing nationalism.The reader is thereby offered an opportunity of seeing the slippery notionof informal empire in operation and of testing its validity.12 The railway hasoften been studied from the standpoint of imperialism; this book makes abeginning with studying imperialism from the standpoint of the railway.

NOTES

1. Fifty-six thousand miles were in Asia (including 30,000 in British India, ap-proximately 5,500 in Siberia and Manchuria, 5,000 in Japan, 4,000 in China, and^.H(K) in Russian central Asia); 18,500 in Africa (including 3,400 in Egypt, 3,000 inAlgeria and Tunis and 7,000 in British South Africa); 20,000 in Australasia; 22,500In (.'anacla; and 49,000 in Latin America, chiefly in Argentina (13,600), Mexico (13,600).UK! Hra/il (10,700). There were 237,000 miles of line in the United States and 200,000in Miirope (23,000 of these in the United Kingdom), Encyclopaedia Britannica, llthIM|. . s.v. "Railways."

2. The "Powers" commonly refers to the world's great political and militaryImwers. During the period covered by this volume, those involved in railway im-I M i i i i l i sm included France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and the UnitedStairs.

.1 Wolfgang J. Mommsen gives an excellent summary in his Theories of Impe-

6 Railway Imperialism

rialism (New York: Random House, 1980); M. Barratt-Brown, The Economics ofImperialism (Harmondsworth: Peguin Education, 1974); Roger Owen and Bob Sut-cliffe, Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972); BernardSemmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1970).4. Hansard (H. L.), 3d ser., vol. 204 (6 March 1871), cols. 1366-67.5. V. Shanmugasundaram, "Some Aspects of the Indian Government's Policy of

State Railways, 1869-1884" (D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1975).6. M. K. Chapman, Great Britain and the Bagdad Railway, 1888-1914 (Nor-

thampton, Mass: Smith College, 1948); W. L. Langer, European Alliances and Align-ments (New York: Knopf, 1950), chap. 10; The Diplomacy of Imperialism (New York:

Knopf, 1935).7. R. Anstey, Great Britain and the Congo in the Nineteenth Century (London:

Oxford University Press, 1962), chap. 11; A. S. Kanya Forstner, The French Conquestof the Western Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), chap. 1;T. W. Roberts, "Railway Imperialism and the French Advance Toward Lake Chad,1873-95" (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1973).

8. R. Robinson, J. Gallagher and A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians 2d ed.(London: Macmillan, 1981), chap. 12, "The Way to Fashoda."

9. K. E. Wilburn, "The Climax of Railway Competition in South Africa, 1887-99" (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1983); D. M. Schreuder, The Scramble forSouthern Africa, 1877-95 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

10. D. Roman, "The Contribution of Imperial Guarantees for Colonial RailwayLoans to the Consolidation of British North America, 1847-1865" (D.Phil, thesis,Oxford University, 1978).

11. H. Feis, Europe, the World's Banker, 1870-1914 (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1930).12. For the debate on informal imperialism, see W. R. Louis, Imperialism, the

Robinson and Gallagher Controversy (New York and London: New Viewpoints,1976); P. J. Cain, Economic Foundations of British Overseas Expansion, The Eco-nomic History Society (London: Macmillan, 1980).

Railway Imperialism in Canada,1847-1865

Donald W. Roman

Between 1847 and 1865 on eleven different occasions, imperial authoritiesin London and responsible colonial ministries in North America negotiatedterms for an imperial guarantee of a loan for an intercolonial railway.1 Theyexpected that such a railway would join the port of Halifax with Quebec andso would link the maritime colonies with Canada; likewise, they hoped thatan imperial guarantee would enable the indebted colonies to raise the nec-essary capital for this unifying railway at advantageous rates, as the BritishTreasury would pay the interest in case the colonies defaulted. Both sidesin the negotiations admitted privately that an intercolonial railway would heneither viable financially nor defensible militarily against the United States;yet politically the railway was so significant in the minds of politicians onboth sides of the Atlantic that neither the Colonial Office nor the BritishAmerican ministries were willing to terminate their discussions unt i l theyhad achieved their objectives. For each the prospect of the imperial #11111antee for this railway was as valuable in the broad context of their relation-ships as a whole, in bargaining for related goals, as was the acceptedguarantee and the building of the railway itself.

There was much common ground between the imperial authorities andcolonial politicians on the principle of the intercolonial railway. They eouldagree that without a guarantee from the British Treasury, the railway eouldnot be built as it would not generate enough traffic to be profitable; that itwould considerably advance their common interests in the Bri t ish Nor thAmerican confederation, imperial mili tary strategy, colonial sell-defense,and westward expansion to the Pacific; and that at times the railway was