Abstract
This important book on the transport history of British India has two wider objectives. Firstly, the study of the Indus Steam Flotilla and her predecessors tries to fill a gap in two much-neglected fields of research: the history of transport and communication in British India, and business and company histories. Secondly, in asking how and why an obviously unprofitable enterprise could carry on (albeit with subsidies) for so long, the work raises crucial questions regarding the relationship between technology and imperial rule.
Some of the reasons for the economic failure of the company, as displayed in the first three chapters, are fairly obvious. First of all, the Indus River with its tricky currents, shifting sandbanks, narrow bends and changing water levels was difficult to navigate even for the specially designed, flat and narrow steamers. These had to be imported from Glasgow at great cost. The company’s books were put further in the red by fuel bills, as wood for the boilers was hard to come by. High wages for the trained permanent staff, frequent additional expenditure on locally hired labourers (towers and pullers, often required to unload and pull out steamers stuck in a sandbank), and competition with the railways on some sections added to the deficit.
The subsequent three chapters look at passengers, cargos and the military transports. The majority of the passengers were Europeans. Soldiers and officials would get their journeys booked on steamships anyway, whilst ordinary Europeans usually preferred a trip on them for the convenience, on-board entertainment, and not last for the degree of segregation from the native population the ships offered – even if this meant to put up with the frequent accidents and delays. Cargos on upriver journeys were usually dominated by European goods, notably beer and alcoholic beverages, while local produce such as textiles formed the bulk of the return cargos. Linking the former to the large number of homeward-bound Europeans who had had to leave their posts for health reasons, Dewey caustically concludes that the main purpose of the steamers was to carry the drinks for the European community up-river, and bring the alcoholics back down.
The third chapter in this section assesses the impact the steamers had on the military campaigns fought in western India during the 1840s and 1850s. Though the author admits that it is impossible to establish the true number of troops shipped to the battlefields, he contends that this would have been a small percentage of the total force (most of which had to march or take the railway). The actual military impact of the steamships will therefore have been negligible, despite various official reports and statements to the contrary. With similar causticity, Dewey suggests that a ‘sea of alcohol’ may have been the fleets’ major contribution to British military activities and expansion in the Northwest.
The third part of the book shifts from the imperial to the subaltern perspective, looking at the consequences the steamers had for the local boatmen, who continued to operate their traditional craft. It shows that though they did lose parts of their business, they were not only able to survive but actually experienced an ‘Indian summer’, resulting from the overall increase of freight and passenger traffic. Eventually, Dewey argues, the bridges and irrigation works built by the Raj posed a bigger threat to their operations than the steamships did.
Dewey then uses this example of native resilience and failure of Western technological superiority to question state-centred approaches to the history of imperialism in a more general manner. Radically scrutinizing earlier research which saw superior technology as a tool of empire, Dewey argues that the steamboats on the Indus challenge three fundamental assumptions of this ‘tools of empire’ approach: that empire-builders could freely choose the technology that suited their aims best; that technology always reinforced imperial rule; and that its transfer and introduction supplanted traditional technologies without fail.
As it seems hard to find any fault with Dewey’s precise analysis and convincing interpretations, his question why an unprofitable enterprise could last so long could find an answer coming from an almost contemporaneous project in India’s eastern province-in-the-making. Rangoon was the first place in the East to see a steamer employed for military purposes in the Anglo-Burmese war of 1824–1826, and the Diana also awed a native people when it took Crawfurd’s embassy to Ava. Steamboats again proved crucial in the second Burmese war, when they helped to break Burmese resistance at the Danubyu stockade. After that war, four steamers plied the Irrawaddy to connect Rangoon with the British frontier town Thayetmyo, before the task was transferred to the Irrawaddy Flotilla (founded in 1863). The Flotilla not only opened access to China ‘through the backdoor’, offering passages up to Bhamo, but it also played a key role in the final annexation of Burma in 1885. Probably, the story of the Indus Steamship Company may have to be read in the light of this partly synchronous but more successful business story.
That said, Dewey’s book is a seminal contribution to the understanding of how the Raj worked. It not only fills a gap in the history of transport, communication and business in nineteenth-century India, it also presents a thoughtful and persuasive argument regarding the link between technology and imperial rule. That alone will make it a ‘must-read’, but lavish illustrations and Dewey’s witty style make it an entirely enjoyable read as well.