Experts set up study to examine steam trains’ links to colonialism
STEAM trains will be examined for links to slavery by the National Railway Museum, as the driving force behind the “expansion of colonial power” is readdressed.
The family attraction in York is one of a group of organisations investigating how steam power aided imperial expansion and drove sugar mills on plantations and cotton gins in industrial cities.
Trains will be assessed for their role in facilitating colonial expansion, say experts involved in the £9,000 research project titled “Slavery and Steam: steam power, railways and colonialism”, which is being backed by the universities of Leeds, Sheffield, and York.
Prof Finch, from the University of York, said: “The relationship between steam power and global trade is complex.
“Railways were critical to the expansion of colonial power across Asia and Africa, as well as the opening up of the North American interior. Wealth generated in the colonies was a stimulus to industrialisation, long after the abolition of slavery in the UK and US.”
The project will delve into the economic, social and infrastructural legacy of steam and slavery, Prof Finch said.
The announcement of the project follows behind the scenes work at the Science Museum Group, of which the Railway Museum is a part, to reassess the legacies of rail travel and colonialism in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests last year.
Internal documents show that staff found “little interpretation that addresses the railways’ role in empire” in its collection of almost 300 locomotives and rolling stock. Objects high
lighted by staff include a 1896 Cape Government Railway locomotive which Science Museum documents recorded “represents a range of stories from Britain’s imperial project”.
The KF7 locomotive, built in Britain in 1935 for the Guangzhou-Hankou railway in China, was paid for by reparations from an indemnity fund set up following the crushing of the Boxer Rebellion. Colonial powers including Great Britain had China pay for the military assistance.
Museum documents record that a quarter-scale model of a Bombay, Baroda & Central India Railway locomotive held at the National Railway Museum was also highlighted due to a lack of information on how such trains helped “strengthen British colonial rule in India.
The Telegraph revealed amid protests last year that museum staff also raised concerns about the train which carried the coffin of Winston Churchill.
Emails revealed fears the locomotive, which took Britain’s wartime prime minister from his state funeral in London to his final resting place in Oxfordshire in 1965, could become the focus of “protest activity” as a result of Churchill’s links to “colonialism and empire”.
Dr Oliver Betts, of the National Railway Museum, said: “Across the Science Museum Group through projects such as this, we are examining Britain’s colonial past to look again at the stories we tell, the voices we represent, and the challenges we face in presenting complex, hitherto untold stories to the public.”