Taming the Iron Horse: Austerity, Subversion, and Revolution in Colonial Egyptian Railways, 1876-1924
Creators: name: Li, Xiaoyue
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Egypt
subject: Infrastructure
subject: Colonialism
subject: Political Economy
subject: Social History
subject: History (General)
subject: Social Sciences

description: Taming the Iron Horse analyzes the Egyptian railway as a site of political arrangements and social engagements during the period when British officials wielded control over the railway system between 1876 and 1924. From the perspectives of infrastructure studies and social history, it considers how the railway assembled technological expertise, administrative management, grassroots experiences, and sheds light on how the railway became central to public conversations and activities. Notably, I have discovered that the heterogeneous actors involved in the Egyptian railway did not always peacefully coexist. The Egyptian railway became an arena of controversies, contestation, and even direct confrontation, which reflected wider socioeconomic crises in the colonial society of Egypt. These crises included but were not limited to diminished government spending, ossified social class stratification, and overt as well as opaque racism. I argue that because the railway imaginatively or, in some instances, practically epitomized these social crises, it became a locus of these struggles throughout the colonial period. This dissertation approaches Egypt’s railway system from two opposite yet related perspectives. From the perspective of colonial governance, I examine how critical yet vexing ideas about a balanced budget, public security, and rationalized management played into the policy-making of the British-supervised railway administration. From the beginning of international intervention in 1876, austerity was implemented as the colonial financial guideline to mitigate Egypt’s enormous public debts. In turn, these austerity measures had a substantial impact on how British officials restructured railway-related departments to achieve substantial increases in the railway’s overall revenue and profitability. To ensure that all policies were well executed, railway administrators also introduced a series of modernizing management methods that strengthened the central government’s control over Egypt’s ever-expanding railway network. By reviewing and analyzing measures of financial austerity and administrative centralization, this dissertation demonstrates that the praxis of modernity was entangled with a colonial redistribution of power. Subsequently, this redistribution of power canonized European technical and managerial knowledge production, demarcated social inclusion/exclusion, and ultimately consolidated British domination of the Egyptian railway sectors. In this respect, this dissertation contributes to the studies of coloniality and modernity, by showcasing their interchangeability and embodiment in the history of Egypt. This dissertation also highlights the multivalent experiences of local Egyptians who lived under colonial railway policies, as well as their responses and reactions. Ranging from intellectuals who observed and commented on global railway development, middle- to lower-level railway employees who coordinated and implemented railway modernization, train travelers who were assigned to specific travel classes, and robbers and thieves who preyed on transported goods for living, this study addresses the effect of colonial railway policies on daily and civic life. It demonstrates how people engaged with different aspects of the railway, including how they repurpose its infrastructure for material gains, adhered to their principles of morality and identity, or envisioned and pursued new political agendas. In doing so, they raised contending visions of modernities and sought to expand technological possibilities beyond what had been inscribed by colonial modernization plans. I conclude that these multiple visions shattered the colonial dream of exerting comprehensive control over the Egyptian railway. Therefore, this dissertation also contributes to studying plural modernities from postcolonial viewpoints in a non-Western society.