Engines of Change: The Railroads That Made India (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780275985646)

The former Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, India remains, by any measure, a major economic and political actor on the world scene. Without her extensive railway network--completed against all odds by her British colonial masters--it is impossible to imagine what might have become of the diverse lands and peoples of the subcontinent. These railway networks brought them together as a colony; these networks fostered the nationalism that would be Britain's downfall. This rail network both remade the physical landscape and brought social-cultural cohesion to a diverse and wide-ranging populace. It would be common rail travel that Gandhi would employ to reach the masses. From its romantic mystique to its dangerous reality, it is rail travel today that keeps vital social, cultural, economic and political forces moving.

India's railroad history serves as a unique lens to her larger story of triumph over adversity. By 1905, India had the world's fourth largest railway network--a position it retains in the early 21st century. The railroads were at the organizational and technological center of many of the inter-related economic, political, social, cultural, and ecological transformations that produced modern India through, and out of, its colonial past. In addition to this vast technical achievement, and (in keeping with the series focus), there is an equally important and wide-sweeping human-interest tale to be told with evocative vignettes of the triumph of the human spirit (one billion strong!) in the face of great adversity.

Author: Ian J. Kerr
ISBN-10: 0275985644
ISBN-13: 9780275985646
Publisher: Praeger
Language: English
Published: 12/30/2006
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.33lbs
Size: 9.56h x 6.46w x 0.96d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2007 pg. 126