Description

Based on archival fieldwork facilitated by an RSAA Travel Award, this lecture will explore how colonial, international, and inter-imperial concerns affected the planning and construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway in the first decade of the twentieth century.

European and Asian powers competed over Chinese railway rights, and the local stories of a 22-mile railway connects to a broader, global tale of trade, modernity, and colonialism. The lecture will look at the ‘scramble for concessions’ over Chinese railway rights, the fears of British businesses in Britain and Hong Kong, and the difficulties involved with building the longest tunnel in China at the time. Engineers, colonial governors, merchants, labourers, and even mosquitos and bullocks are characters in this story of imperial railway construction.