SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Railways and the re-conceiving of journeys in colonial India: guidebooks and travelogues

This paper will assess the impact of the railways on the nature of journeys in colonial India. It will look into the ways in which railways engendered new forms of journeys and re-configured older ones. This paper will also argue that the railways played a crucial role in re-convening journeys and will note its implications for colonial India. All this would be done by a critical examination of two distinct sources: the railway guidebooks [travel guides] and travelogues.  The choice of these two sources is deliberate, as both were responses to the railway encounter and a focus on these two is expected to bring out the relation between the railways and the nature of journeys. This paper is divided into three sections: the first two sections are about railway guidebooks and travelogues respectively. These sections will examine the content; growth and use of these texts to assess their influence in shaping the nature of journeys.  The final and third section will underline the role of the railway in shifting the nature of journeys and its implications by comparing the pre-railway travel narratives with the post-railway ones.