Railroads and the Transformation of China by Elisabeth Köll

Abstract

Reviewed by: Railroads and the Transformation of China by Elisabeth Köll Ying Jia Tan (bio) Railroads and the Transformation of China By Elisabeth Köll. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 396. Railroads and the Transformation of China By Elisabeth Köll. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 396. Railroads have featured prominently as engines of change in histories of modern nation-states and economies. As the first comprehensive history of China's railroad development in any language, Elisabeth Köll's well-researched account addresses issues of interest to historians of technology. It demonstrates how, in the words of Peter Norton in "Urban Transport and Mobility in Technology and Culture," "transport and mobility are not technological systems governed by purportedly objective measures (such as efficiency), but socio-technical systems that are constantly subject to the influence of social groups" (Technology and Culture, 2020, p. 1203). This work of business and institutional history brings into focus key socioeconomic factors that either impeded or accelerated the expansion of China's railroads. Köll explicitly spells out her objective in the opening paragraph by noting that the examination of "social, economic, cultural, and political functions" addresses "how and to what extent railroads affected China's development throughout the twentieth century, and conversely how this trajectory left an imprint on the railroad itself as a bureaucratic system" (p. 1). The chapters offer a chronological account that begins with the depiction of trains and railroads in journals published in the 1870s and ends with the abolition of the Ministry of Railways in the wake of the catastrophic collision of two high-speed trains in Wenzhou in 2011. Köll focuses on the following three major railroad lines owing to the comprehensiveness of archival documentation before the Communist revolution in 1949: the Tianjin-Pukou line connecting North China with the lower Yangtze, the Guangzhou-Hankou line connecting the middle Yangtze with the Pearl River delta, and the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo line connecting commercial centers in the lower Yangtze. The institutional analysis begins with the fractious integration of "Western managerial styles with indigenous business practices" under a semicolonial context and then moves on to the integration of railway lines into a national network during decades of regime change, war, and revolution (p. 20). After examining how these railroad companies became incorporated in the socialist economy and played a role in radical campaigns between the 1950s and 1960s, the study concludes by showing how the Chinese railroad system concurrently underwent rational bureaucratization and maintained autonomy at the regional and local levels (pp. 296–97). Köll's narrative arc follows Thomas Hughes's four-stage process in the [End Page 962] formation of technical systems, namely, invention, technology transfer, the correcting of reverse salients during system growth, and momentum (Networks of Power, 1993, pp. 14–17). The agents of historical change differ widely from Hughes's theory, which is generalized from electrical power systems in Western nations. While Hughes focused on the work of engineers, Köll briefly touches on their role in a section on the professionalization of railroad engineering (pp. 168–78). Her institutional approach instead focuses on the responses of managers, state administrators, and even military leaders to political upheaval and explores the implications of their decisions on the railroad system. The main problems of the "technology transfer" phase in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries arose from the "tensions and misunderstandings created by the half-dozen colonial powers building railroads under Chinese management," which in turn led to improvised solutions to resolve disputes over financing, surveying, land purchases, and construction (p. 51). Köll highlights the contribution of the military during the "system growth" and "momentum" stages. Not only did the inept handling of the engines by captives of warlord armies damage the equipment, but the soldiers themselves exacerbated engine failure by helping themselves to the hot water from the engine or the cold water from the tender (p. 71). The military was not entirely destructive. In the 1920s, armies of the warlord Zhang Xun and nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek transformed Xuzhou into a main supply station during their military campaigns (p. 120). The strategic destruction of...