Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
neighbors became proximate, indeed closer to others in ports or on the same
rail lines than they were to people nearer in terms of miles but removed from
the transportation networks.”
Railroads were the most explicit symbol of the vast time-space compres-
sion unleashed throughout the nineteenth century. In addition to their ability
to shuttle people, railroads could move heavy loads over long overland
stretches, but not in areas with too steep a grade, reducing land transport
costs by as much as 95 percent. Schivelbusch (1977:45) argues that “As the
space between points—the traditional travel space—is destroyed, those
points move into each other's vicinity: one might say that they collide. They
lose their old sense of local identity, which used to be determined by the
spaces between them. The isolation of localities, which was created by spatial
distance, was the very essence of their identity, their self-assumed and com-
placent individuality.”
British railroads, the world's
first, began with the Penydarren Tramroad in
Wales in 1804, although it did not rely upon steam power (Vance 1990). In
1814, George Stephenson unveiled the
fi
fi
first steam locomotive, and the British
system expanded rapidly, the
first being the Stockton and Darlington Railway
in 1825, one of a series of famous railways. In 1830, the
fi
first interurban
railroad connected Liverpool and Manchester. Early railroads achieved
speeds between 20 and 30 mph, or three times that achieved by stagecoaches;
later ones achieved speeds up to 70 or 80 mph. By 1838, the London to
Birmingham route opened to immediate success, reducing the time needed to
travel the 112 miles in between from 12.5 to 5.5 hours. Other travel times fell
accordingly: from London to York, for example, took 96 hours to walk in
1754, 36 hours by stagecoach in 1776, and 20 hours by railroad (Vance 1990).
The
Quarterly Review
o
fi
ered a famous synopsis of the railroads' impacts on
the new geography of Britain in 1839:
ff
Supposing that railroads, even at our present simmering rate of travelling,
were to be suddenly established all over England, the whole population
of the country would, speaking metaphorically, at once advance en
masse, and place their chairs nearer to the
fireside of their metropolis by
two-thirds of the time which now separates them from it; they would also
sit nearer to one another by two-thirds of the time which now respect-
ively alienates them. If the rate were to be su
fi
ciently accelerated, this
process would be repeated; our harbours, our dock-yards, our towns, the
whole of our rural population, would again not only draw nearer to each
other by two-thirds, but all would proportionately approach the national
hearth. As distances were thus annihilated, the surface of our country
would, as it were, shrivel in size until it became not much bigger than one
immense city.
(Quoted in Schivelbusch 1977:34)
During a period of intense, widespread and rapid urbanization, railroads
Search WWH ::
Custom Search