Page 118 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

transportation—overview 1895

were not built until roads and trucks supplanted them neously, European intruders took advantage of steam-
after about 1930. boats and railroads to penetrate China and Africa as
never before. Japan, however, built its own railroads and
The Advent of Rail Travel steam ships. Everywhere else the new modes of transport
For overland transport, steam powered railroads fol- were owned or managed by Europeans or persons of
lowed close behind oceanic steamships. The first com- European descent until well into the twentieth century.
mercial steam railroad, 25 miles long, opened in England Until 1945 or so, Europeans retained this privileged
in 1825; but building longer railroads was costly and position and, by making some accommodation to the
took time. Railroads therefore began to come into their United States after 1865, managed world affairs pretty
own only in the 1860s.The first transcontinental railway much to suit themselves. Near monopoly of mechanical
opened in 1869 when the Union Pacific Railroad in the transport and communication sustained this lop-sided
United States was completed. Thereafter European arrangement for a while, but it remained inherently
investors financed railroad building wherever strategic or unstable. One instability arose from rivalries among the
commercial advantages suggested. The opening of the chief European states, climaxing in two world wars,
Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1903, connecting St. Peters- 1914–1918 and 1939–1945. Just as important was the
burg on the Baltic with Vladivostok on the Pacific, was way the propagation of the new transport (and com-
the longest railroad ever built and still helps to hold the munication) nets among Asian, African, and American
Russian state together. populations allowed local peoples to mobilize their dis-
In western Europe itself, railroads gave easy access to contents and prepare to assert control over their own
inland coalfields, accelerating industrial development societies again. As a result, soon after World War II
enormously. Railroads also played a prominent part in European colonial empires disintegrated everywhere.
European wars as early as 1859, climaxing during World
War I (1914–1918) when railroad schedules for mobi- New Modes of Transport
lization locked initial war plans into place, and subse- in the Twentieth Century
quently supplied all the war fronts for years on end. More decentralized and flexible forms of overland trans-
The impact of railroads was especially great in large port powered by internal combustion motors sustained
countries like the United States, Russia, Canada, India this political transformation. Cars and trucks first became
and Argentina, binding them together internally more important for the transport of goods and persons during
closely than before while also entangling them in world- World War I. Trucks commonly carried loads door to
wide markets. China as always remained different, for door, diminishing transfer costs. In addition, individuals
old-fashioned barge transport on internal waterways con- and small companies could compete with larger fleets of
tinued to function slowly but cheaply; and for more than trucks on more or less even terms. Roads still had to be
a century political instability inhibited large-scale railroad built and maintained by public authorities and remained
construction. costly. But roads were considerably cheaper to build
For the world as a whole, steam ships and railroads than railroads. Hence for hauls of less than three or four
together created a far faster and more capacious transport hundred miles, the convenience and flexibility of trucking
system than before. Millions of persons emigrated from was almost as superior to railroad transport as railroads
crowded lands in the Old World to settle in the Americas, had been to river steamboats eighty years before.
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.Vast quantities Almost simultaneously, airplanes began to affect trans-
of grain and other foods, together with minerals and port. Airplanes took off with the Wright brothers’ flights
other raw materials, and innumerable manufactured in 1903, but World War II was what made them impor-
goods began to circulate throughout the world. Simulta- tant for transport, a generation after cars and trucks had