The City and the Railway in the World ― 19th to 21st Centuries

Few technologies have had as profound an impact upon the urban environment as the railway. Allowing the rapid and inexpensive transportation of people, goods and ideas, by the end of the nineteenth century the rail networks had a dramatic influence upon the shape size and architecture of virtually every city and large town in Europe and beyond. In order to further understanding of the complex and dynamic inter-relationship between city and rail, this volume provides a selection of essays that address a variety of themes from a broad international perspective.

Building upon scholarly concepts explored in a previous volume, ’The City and the Railway in Europe’ (Routledge, 2003), this new collection expands the geographical focus by including essays that look at examples not only in Europe but also from India, Nigeria, the USA, Mexico, Chile and Japan. This allows many questions raised in the original volume to be positioned and tested within a much larger framework, one that is not limited to the particular social, cultural, economic and geographical considerations of western Europe.

Ralf Roth is Professor of Modern History at the Department of History at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His numerous articles are focused on the social and cultural history of cities and communication networks. He wrote among others Das Jahrhundert der Eisenbahn. Die Herrschaft uber Raum und Zeit 1800 – 1914 (2005), Stadte im europaischen Raum. Verkehr, Kommunikation und Urbanitat im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (2009), together with Karl Schlogel, Neue Wege in ein neues Europa. Geschichte und Verkehr im 20. Jahrhundert (2009), and a special issue of the Zeitschrift fur Weltgeschichte on the topic Weltverkehr und Weltgeschichte (Autumn, 2011). He has recently published books together with Henry Jacolin on Eastern Eureopean Railways in Transition (2013) and together with Colin Divall on From Rail to Road and Back Again? A Century of Transport Competition and Interdependency (2015). At the moment he and Henry Jacolin are editing a volume about transport routes between Europe and Asia entitled From Baghdad Railway to the New Silk Road (19th to 21st Centuries) – Utopian Dreams, Past Achievements, and Future Prospects (forthcoming). He is editor of two journals on urban and world history and series editor about new approaches to a global railway history.

Paul Van Heesvelde worked for the Flemish transport minister; he is historian and PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB). His publications include Destination le Front. Les chemins de fer en Belgique pendant la Grande Guerre (2014). He published articles in Revue d’Histoire des Chemins de fer and in Ferrum. He is currently working on a new book on railway station buffets and is finishing his PhD on Railways, Logistics and Warfare in Belgium from 1830 to 1918.