Nineteenth-Century Infrastructures before ‘Infrastructure’

Abstract

What is at stake when we bring nineteenth-century projects into dialogue with critical infrastructure studies? This introduction highlights the conceptual, material, and geopolitical stakes of Victorian infrastructure, as explored in contributions to this issue of 19. By opening up margins of contested meaning in and around large-scale systems during a unique period of development, this introduction lays a foundation for the road ahead in nineteenth-century infrastructure studies.