Abstract
The Epilogue tries to expose some of the connections between the individual contributions by focusing on how they address the relations between individuals, networks and particular institutions at points of technological advancement, crisis or failure. This volume’s editors are firm in their contention that the engineering, legal and managing experts from around the mid-nineteenth century were far more central to the dynamics of global economic and cultural change than earlier analysts have allowed. To an extent this perspective is becoming more dominant as a result of the very fine detailed work done in the area of history of science by a wide range of intellectual, social and cultural historians, as well as in the history of technology by new historians who are first recognising and then stressing networks, institutions, intellectual property rights and, perhaps in particular, the intervening power—both limiting and stimulating—of developmental states.
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Notes
- 1.
See especially for city/spatial emphases, Renn, Jürgen: ‘Survey: The Place of Local Knowledge in the Global Community’, in Renn, J. (ed.), The Globalization of Knowledge in History, Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge (online), 2012; McCann, P. and Acs, Z.: ‘Globalization: Connectivities, Cities and Multinationals’, Regional Studies, Vol. 45, No. 1 (2011), pp. 17–32.
- 2.
Here we are pointing to the compradore as a special form of local agent whose power and income depend on command of linguistic, tacit and formal knowledge or information to extract profit or status from commercial, technical or cultural exchanges. In their key positions—which by nature are transitory—they may act almost in the same Janus-faced role as medieval guilds, in some cases being positive intermediaries between foreign and indigenous techniques, in other cases they may strongly inhibit passages of knowledge. LaBianca, O.S. and Scham, S.A. (eds.): Connectivity in Antiquity – Globalization as a Long Term Historical Process, London: Equinox, 2006. For more modern usage of the notion of compradore in global history and connectivity which embrace brokerage of information and technique and apply mostly to East Asia from around the mid-nineteenth century—often in colonial settings—see Kai Yiu Chan, ‘A Turning Point in China’s Comprador System, 1912–1925’, Business History, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2001), pp. 54–72; and for application to one case in some detail Goh Chor Boon, Technology and Entrepot Colonialism in Singapore 1819–1940, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013, and Inkster, I.: ‘The Trouble with Technology: Comments on the Experience of Singapore under Entrepot Capitalism’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 72, No.1 (2000), pp. 107–15.
- 3.
The Practical Magazine II (1873), pp. 431–2.
- 4.
For some argument concerning the patterns of engineering agency see Inkster, I.: ‘Engineering Identity, Intellectual Property, and Information Systems in Industrialization circa 1830–1914’ in Cardoso de Matos, A., et al. (eds.), The Professional Identity of Engineers: Historical and Contemporary Issues, Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2009, pp. 357–380.
- 5.
It also lies comfortably with the strengthening thesis that much earlier non-Western knowledge from pure mathematics to steel-making contributed to central aspects of identifiably Western scientific evolution, this embracing the huge contributions of Chinese culture and the disturbing and renovating impacts of Islam in very early years, as well as the even less measurable impacts of the great diasporas.
- 6.
Inkster, I.: ‘Technology Transfer and Industrial Transformation: an Interpretation of the Pattern of Economic Development circa 1870–1914’, in Fox, Robert (ed.), Technological Change. Methods and Themes in the History of Technology, London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996, pp. 177–201.
- 7.
Lemon, Michael and Medina, Eden: ‘Technology in an Expanded Field: A Review of History of Technology Scholarship on Latin America in selected English-Language Journals’ in Medina, E., et al. (eds.), Beyond Imported Magic. Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014, quote p. 112.
- 8.
In Solvay’s ammonia-soda process an ammoniacal brine is fed into a stream of carbon dioxide to absorption, forming sodium hydrogen carbonate. This separates into fine crystals leaving ammonium chloride to be passed on, to be heated with lime, producing ammonia to be used again. The point here being that technically Solvay was superior and used byproducts; industrially, however, it involved large expenditure in absorption towers and so on,. and some of its advantages could be superseded with Leblanc by savings on raw materials and production of a greater diversity of chemical products. This was a contemporary parallel that had definite technical parameters but commercial implications that were less measurable.
- 9.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning that Frederick Halsey’s statement in The Metric Fallacy concerning the ‘iridescent dream’ must be a direct reference to the phantasmagorical Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream, the novel by John Kendrick Bangs published in 1907 by Doubleday in New York. In this parody of Lewis Carroll, Alice enters a political economy of over-taxation and ludicrous regulation, so Halsey was aiming at his target with great contemporary satirical aplomb.
- 10.
From ‘Exposição’ (Acta da sessão de 6 de Maio de 1899), Revista de Obras Públicas e Minas (1899), pp. 353–354 and 382–383.
- 11.
For which see Inkster in this volume and Inkster, I: ‘Machinofacture and Technical Change: The Patent Evidence’, in Inkster et al. (eds.): The Golden Age. Essays in British Social and Economic History 1850–1870, London: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 121–142.
- 12.
For outlines of the debate on this see the chapters by Inkster and Derbyshire in MacLeod, Roy and Kumar, Deepak (eds.), Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfers to India, 1700–1947, London: Sage, 1995.
- 13.
Quoted in Das, M.N.: Studies in the Economic and Social Development of Modern India, Calcutta, 1959, pp. 35–36.
- 14.
By inserting a clause that railway development in India should be in the hands of private companies under British government supervision with a guarantee of a minimum rate of return on capital of 5%—above the prevailing rates in the London money market—Lord Dalhousie’s Railway Minute of April 1853 effectively ‘killed effort for economy, promoted recklessness, and involved the country in liabilities much beyond what the people could bear’; quoted from Sanyal, Nalinaksha: Development of Indian Railways, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1930, p. 17; and see also Weld, W.E.: India’s Demand for Transportation, New York, 1920 especially p. 65. For an excellent short summary see Dubey, Vinod: ‘Railways’, in Singh, V.B. (ed.), Economic History of India 1857–1956, Bombay: Allied Publishers, Bombay, 1965, pp. 327–347.
- 15.
Adelman, Jeremy: ‘What is Global History now?’ AEON (2 March 2017).
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Inkster, I. (2018). Epilogue: Technology’s Activists and Global Dynamics. In: Pretel, D., Camprubí, L. (eds) Technology and Globalisation. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75450-5_14
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