Railways and The Raj

Having had family working with the railways in British India, I picked up Railways and The Raj hoping for a full history of the railways in India and its successors (Pakistan and the like) including a deep insight into the lives of the peoples who worked and travelled upon it. Wolmar's book is certainly a social history, but more of a social history of India and how the railways impacted it. So broad is this approach that what feel like major areas - the railways and the protection of India from the Japanese in the Second World War - really could be their own books.

Still, such an approach needn't make the book one of any less merit. Wolmar does a good job of setting out the development of Indian railways, but he often does it from his personal point of view that, at least for the railways, the ‘British are bad' and that racism underpinned a lot of the decisions taken as to the development of those railways. Sometimes he provides primary sources proving racism, other times he breezily states a decision was arrived at because of racism yet fails to provide evidence that was the truly case. Owing to Wolmar's own bias (and the argument he sets out to prove) he leaves little room for the exploration of ideas contrary to racism: were some developments and actions the result of bigotry, mere capitalism, outright greed or, mayhap, ignorance? Or were they just poor decisions? To err is to human.

A historian typically shouldn't judge actions of the past through a modern lens - we would loathe the Ancient Greeks if we were to judge them by 21st century standards - and yet Wolmar often can't help himself but do just that when it comes to Imperial Britain. And it's a pity, because he leaves a lot on the table even within his narrow concept of railways and racism. For instance, how many decisions were arrived at because of the problems inherent in the biases and bigotry within British India's own social constructs of not just white vs. the rest, but the caste system? We all have an understanding of how the class system has impacted Britain, in Railways and The Raj Wolmar lays out how the class system impacted the railways (typically, and even when wrong, labelling that class system as racism instead of classism) but when it comes to the bigotry of a caste system his social history is left wanting and the reader little the wiser. Which is a pity because an exploration of such an area would likely have added something not just to the readers' understanding of railways but also their understanding of Empire.