Railway history
Railway history is a sub-field of history that researches the development and impacts of railways. While wagonways, tramways, and railways in some form date back to antiquity, railways started to have social and economic impacts in early 19th century in Britain. Railway history, like history itself, is compounded by sub-disciplines. Railway history is most often categorized (as per the Library of Congress subject headings) as a sub-field of economic history, but as many works focus on individual companies it is often considered a sub-field of business history as well. Historians of labor, culture, technology, and cities have also made significant contributions to the historical meanings and implications of railways.
History of Railways in Britain
History of Railways in the British Empire
History of railways in Europe U.S. Railroad History
U.S. labor
Licht (1983) shows that railways changed employment in many ways. Lines with hundreds or thousands of employees developed systematic rules and procedures, not only for running the equipment but in hiring, promoting, paying and supervising employees. The railway system was adopted by all major business. Railways offered a new type of work experience in enterprises vastly larger in size, complexity and management. At first workers were recruited from occupations where skills were roughly analogous and transferable, that is, workshop mechanics from the iron, machine and building trades; conductors from stagecoach drivers, steamship stewards and mail boat captains; station masters from commerce and commission agencies; and clerks from government offices.
Asia
Japan
In Japan railways were part of the stunningly successful industrial transformation of the late nineteenth century. Betweem 1870 and 1874, railway building accounted for nearly a third of all state investment in modern industry, augmented by large British loans. Profits were high as the lines facilitated the rapid growth of textiles, cement, glass, and machine tools as well as civil engineering.
China
China started building late. In 1900 there were only 860 kilometers of track and about 3,000 railway workers. After 1920 the major cities, ports and mining districts were connected. Railways became a major employer of industrial labor and by 1937 they had about 300,000 employees in China Proper and the Japanese-controlled Northeast, along 21,270 kilometers of track.
Economic impact
Twentieth Century
See also Industrial Revolution
Labor issues
- Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century Princeton University Press, 1983
- Morgan, Stephen L. "Personnel Discipline and Industrial Relations on the Railways of Republican China." The Australian Journal of Politics and History. 47#1 (2001) pp 24+ online edition
Technology
- Alston, Liviu. Railways and Energy. Washington, DC: World Bank. 1984.
- Biddle, Gordon. Britain's Historic Railway Buildings: An Oxford Gazetteer of Structures and Sites. (2003). 759 pp.
- Drinkwater, Robert. "Code of the Rail" Beaver 2005 85(1): 41-43. ISSN: 0005-7517 Fulltext: in Ebsco
- Grant, H. Roger. The Railroad: The Life Story of a Technology. Greenwood, 2005. 182 pp.
- Marsden, Ben and Smith, Crosbie. Engineering Empires: A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth-Century Britain. 2005. 351 pp.
- McGowan, Christopher. Rail, Steam, And Speed: The "Rocket" and the Birth of Steam Locomotion. (2004). 400 pp.
- Riley, C. J. The Encyclopedia of Trains & Locomotives (2002).
Primary sources
- Foreign Railways of the World: Containing in One Volume, the Names of Officers, Length, Capital,... (1884)
- books on Canadian RR history