Indian Railways in the Imperial Imagination | On an Article in The Illustrated London News of March 1871

On March 4, 1871, The Illustrated London News reported on the prospects of connecting European railways with the Indian Railways. Here is an excerpt from the article.

The Hon. Mr. Walpole is said to be at present at Constantinople endeavouring to negotiate with the Turkish Government a concession for a railway from a port in the Mediterranean down the valley of the Euphrates to Bussorah in the Persian Gulf. Such a line would present few engineering difficulties. But we have already recorded our belief, that, even if made, it could never become the highway to the East. If the European and Indian railway systems are to be connected, it must be by a line which will establish unbroken communication. Now, Bussorah is still a long way from India, and the mountainous and desert character of Beloochistan would present almost insuperable difficulties to the continuation of the railway through it. The proposal consequently is to continue the communication by swift steamers from Bussorah. But if steamers are to be used, it will be nearly as expedient, and much more convenient, to run them from Brindisi, which is precisely what is already done. The link which connects the European and Indian systems must be a complete link, and not a fragment, and the route which should follow is perfectly well known to those who have given the subject a discriminating attention. Arrangements are already on foot for carrying the European system as far as Constantinople, and thence to a line constructed on the ordinary European gauge should be carried through Ismid, Boli, Tosia, Amasia, Niksar, Kara Hissar, Sadhik (the ancient Satala), Lori, Karakoulak, through a crack in the mountains called Sheitan Dereyesi, or the Devil’s Valley, into the valley of the Kara Su, or western branch of the Euphrates, which leads over easy ground to Erzroom, whence the line would be continued through Tabrèez and Teheran to Herat, and India. Such a line would constitute an efficient link of communication. It would pass through some of the best parts of Turkey and Persia, would follow the existing track of commerce, and would be exempt from the intolerable heat of any line carried through the deserts of the south. Besides serving the important purpose of connecting the European and Indian railway systems, such a line would attract to itself a considerable local traffic, and render important aid to Government by facilitating its civil and military operations. A comprehensive system of railways in Turkey is one of the prime necessities of that country. Naturally, Asia Minor is one of the finest countries of the world, and was at one time among the most prosperous. But for many years it has been declining both in wealth and population, and it cannot be expected that England should continue to act as the protector of Turkey unless that country should manifest some fitting anxiety to make beneficial use of its great resources.

The mouthpiece of the British Empire imagined India as the far terminus of a great continental chain still waiting to be forged. The article rejected a merely partial connection, such as a railway to Bussorah (Basra) followed by steamers, and insists on “unbroken communication.” Railways, in its vision, were supposed to bind Europe and India into a single administrative, commercial, and strategic corridor. The ideal railways, therefore, were not a local convenience, but an imperial continuum. Within the geography of this dream route, India appeared at the very end, in a passage that traversed Constantinople, Asia Minor, Persia, and Herat. It placed India within a larger chain of movement stretching westwards to Europe and eastwards to the subcontinent. This was an old imperial habit of thought, where railway lines were not merely transport systems but instruments of political imagination. The article valued routes that follow “the existing track of commerce,” revealing an important Victorian principle: that railways should not merely conquer space; they should seized and formalized routes already made legible by trade, caravan, and imperial mobility. In that sense, the article presented railways as the mechanical heir of older commercial geographies.

The passage also revealed a distinctly colonial confidence in knowing which lands deserve development and which routes are practicable. The route through Beloochistan (Balochistan) was declared nearly impossible, while the line through Turkey and Persia was presented as superior because it was cooler, easier, and commercially richer. Indian railway history, in this passage, began not with the building of stations or tracks, but with the colonial habit of judging terrain according to imperial utility. Most revealingly, the article suggested that such a connection would aid “civil and military operations.” Here railways were openly tied to governance and force. The railways were clearly an arm of state power. Rail connections across Turkey and Persia would strengthen administration, improve mobility, and render imperial governance more effective. In India, as in other parts of Empire, railroads were expected to organize territory, accelerate command, and make distant places governable. The article, unsurprisingly, placed transportation within a wider architecture of imperial control, where mobility and mastery travel together.

The passage also contained a note of civilizational paternalism. Asia Minor was described as “one of the finest countries of the world,” but one that had declined in wealth and population. The explanation was a lack of proper railway development. England, the article implied, ought not continue as Turkey’s protector unless Turkey made “beneficial use” of its resources. This was Victorian imperial language at its neatest and harshest. It converted a political relationship into a moral lesson about infrastructure. Railways became the proof of national worth. The country that built them was deemed vigorous and modern. The country that lacked them was treated as fallen, dormant, or underused.

Seen from the standpoint of Indian railways, the article revealed the mindset from which imperial rail projects grew. India was not seen as a self-contained national system, but as part of a vast transcontinental corridor imagined by European strategists and commentators. The language of “complete link,” “efficient link,” and “unbroken communication” implied that railways were being thought of as civilizational seams, stitching together continents under imperial logic. What later became an internal infrastructure story in India was, in this 1871 article, already entangled with the larger ambition of connecting Europe to the subcontinent by one continuous modern route. Within that, the railways were imagined as both practical and imperial, both commercial and strategic, both geographic and ideological. And, India appeared at the edge of Europe’s railway fantasy, not as a national network, but as the promised end of a road meant to bind empire into a single moving body.