Railways' Economic Impact on Uttar Pradesh and Colonial North India (1860-1914)

Informed by decades of archival research, this ground-breaking book provides the first detailed and holistic analysis of the impact on North India’s rural and urban economies of colonial British India’s major infrastructural investment in railways, covering their first fifty years (1860-1914). By 1914, a dense 4,800 mile rail network was in place in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state. This book provides a wide-ranging analysis of railways’ economic, social, demographic and environmental effects in this key region.

It provides new insights into how rail construction adapted to North Indian conditions, how the state pioneered more efficient railway building and operations in the 1870s, and how the western part of the UP and ‘independent’ cultivators benefitted from rail opportunities while the river-served East UP became involuted, buttressed by migrant remittances, among many other topics. This book will be an essential read for those seeking to understand economic developments in Colonial India and railway’s role.