Transportation

Revolution and
Global History
1830-1950
Development
of Railways
 1835
Great Britain 120 miles

Austria-Hungary 120 miles

United States 800 miles

Russia 13 miles
J. N Westwood, A History of Russian Railways (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.,
1964).
 1907
167,000 miles
Outside of Europe
and the US
Ronald E. Robinson, “Introduction: Railway Imperialism,” in Clarence B. Davis,
Kenneth E Wilburn, Jr. and Ronald E. Robinson (eds.), Railway Imperialism (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1991).
 Railways
outside the
West by
1907
Idem, Railway
Imperialism
About
50,000 miles
About 30,000 miles
About
18,000
miles
Impact of Railway
networks in
specific locations
Argentina
 1866

Ver: Juan
Roccatagliata, Los
Ferrocarriles en
Argentina (Buenos
Aires: Eudeba, 1987).
1882
1896
1914
Belgium 1843
Belgium
1913
 Russia
1870

Idem, A History
of Russian
Railways
Russia
1890

Idem, A
History of
Russian
Railways
 Idem, A History of
Russia 1959 Russian Railways.
Ralph William Huenemann, The Dragon and
the Iron Horse: The Economies of Railroads in
China, 1876-1937 (Cambridge: The Harvard
Northern China 1895
University Press, 1984).
Idem, The Dragon and the Iron Horse…
Northern China 1937
Mexico
Mexico 1895
Mexico 1910
 Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro García,

Eastern Cuba 1837-1898 Sugar & Railroads: A Cuban History,

1837-1959 (Chapel Hill, The University of
North Carolina Press, 1998 [1987
original edition in Spanish]), p. 57 and
230.
 Idem, Sugar and Railroads

Eastern Cuba 1899-1930

 Idem, Sugar
and Railroads
Western Cuba 1837-1899
On the Eve of the Cuban Revolution (1959)

Idem, Sugar and Railroads

Impact of the
Global Extension
of Railways and
the Steamship
1. Abolition of Space

2.Increasing trade between regions of the

world

3.Global mass migration within and

between countries
Examples of Abolition of Space

Distance
between
Mendoza (B) and
Rosario (A)

(870 km are
about 500
miles)
 Between Mendoza and Rosario
It took Benjamín Vicuña Mckenna 13
days to traverse this distance in 1855,
he stopped 80 times and used 200
horses.
In 1885 the same distance took only
26 hours after the railway was built.
William J Fleming, “Profits and Visions: British
Capital and Railway Construction in Argentina,
1854-1886” in Clarence B. Davis, Kenneth E
Wilburn, Jr. and Ronald E Robinson (eds.), Railway
Imperialism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 71.
Abolition of
Space in the
United States
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1991).
Mexico
“twelve hours by train
rather than twelve days
on foot”
Teresa Miriam Van Hoy, A Social History of Mexico’s Railroads: Peons, Prisoners,
and Priests (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008).
 William R. Summerhill,
Increasing Trade Order Against Progress:
Government, Foreign
Investment, and Railroads in
São Paulo Railways Brazil, 1854-1913 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press,
2003).

1871 93,000 Tons

1913 158,000,000 Tons

 Russia
1899 63 million
tons

1913 158 million

tons
Idem, A History of Russian
Railways
 Socio-Economic Transformations

Before the train Self-Subsistence

After the train Co-dependent

economies interrelated
through world trade
Before the train: Self-Subsistence
After the train: Co-dependence
 Idem, A History

Displacement of People of Russian

Railways

Number of Annual Passengers

in Russia
1900 104 millons
1904 128 millons
1913 244 millons
 Global Migration

Between 1850 and 1950

Trans-AtlanticAsia-Pacifico

50 millons aprox. 50 millons aprox.

Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second

Milennium (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).
 Gender and Global Migration
Between 1850 and 1950 a higher
proportion of young single men
migrated.

Women migrated less and often

with their families.
Shanghai
“Shanghai’s fringe populations did include
recently established and sometimes temporary
groups of young and unmarried men who were
no doubt hard working, but also fond of drink
and women and quick to brawl.” Christian
Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai:
A Social History, 1849-1949 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 79-80.
Shanghai was a major
transportation hub in Asia
Some examples of disproportionate male
migration

Migrants to Malaysia,
Percentage of men

1921 1931 1947

99% 97,5% 95,5%

Amarjit Kaur, “Working on the Railway: Indian Workers in Malaya, 1880-1957,” in: Peter J.
Rimmer & Lisa M. Allen (eds.), The Underside of Malaysian History: Pullers, Prostitutes,
Plantation Workers… (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990).
Buenos Aires

Historians
Marcela Nari y Sandra Gayol
describe a similar phenomenon
Ratio of men
to women in
Buenos Aires