Railways and Empire : When Britain Ruled The Rails

The railways were a British invention and the railway age began with the completion of the Liverpool & Manchester in 1830. The railway habit quickly spread abroad, both to Europe and across the Atlantic to the United States. And wherever these early railways were built, British technology was used in the initial development.

Pioneers like Robert Stephenson and Brunel travelled around Europe promoting the concept and soon men who built the lines, like Samuel Peto and Thomas Brassey were laying tracks across the world. They were following British capital which was instrumental in stimulating railway development in places as far flung as Argentina and South Africa.

By the outbreak of the First World, British investors owned 113 railways in 29 countries, by far the world’s greatest source of railway capital, stimulating a massive growth in the activities and power of the City of London . Britain, too, used railways to cement its control over its own colonies, notably in India where a huge network of lines was created partly for military purposes and a line was built across Egypt in order to allow the British to reclaim control over Sudan.

This book will tell the story of how British railway technology conquered the world and how it helped the railways to spread and establish its empire. It will also show how this influence gradually waned as local interests took over, but how simultaneously British capital ensured that the City continued to flourish on the basis of the spread of the railways.

Book Author

Christian Wolmar is a writer and broadcaster specialising in transport. He has spent nearly all of his working life as a journalist, and lately was at The Independent where he worked from 1989 to 1997, as transport correspondent and UK Political Correspondent. After graduating from Warwick university in 1971, Christian started his career at Marketing magazine and then the Hampstead and Highgate Express where he was a sports reporter. He later moved to the New Statesman and the London Daily News. He is currently a freelance, working regularly for a variety of publications including the Even...
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