Robert M. Schwartz
In a
recent presentation on the Sardinian cadastre of 1730, André Palluel-Guillard encouraged historians and historical
geographers to apply the methods of Geographic Information Systems (système informatique géographique) to study the oldest land survey of its kind
in
It seems
fitting to honor my friend and colleague by responding to his appeal. Although I cannot speak about the Sardinian
cadastre and the alpine communities it so richly documents, I can illustrate
how GIS methods aid the study of geographic patterns in the past. The patterns to be examined here concern the relationship
between the extension of the railway system and the evolution of rural
communities in Victorian England. The
essay is a report on work in progress, so exploration and initial results, as
opposed to full conclusions, will predominate.
To begin the exploration, we shall
look first at an example in rural
In the mid
1840s, news spread among the 500 residents of Thenissey
that a rail line linking
How often
did this story repeat itself in rural
The
growth of the rail system in
No words can
convey an adequate notion of the magnificence ( I cannot use a smaller word )
of our progress. At first it was comparatively slow;
but soon we felt that we were GOING, and then it was that every person to whom
the conveyance was new, must have been sensible that the adaptation of
locomotive power was establishing a fresh era in the state of society.…
The most
intense curiosity and excitement prevailed... and ... enormous masses of
densely packed people lined the road, shouting and waving hats and
handkerchiefs as we flew by them. What with the sight
and sound of these cheering multitudes and the tremendous velocity with which
we were borne past them, my spirits rose to true champagne height.[6]
As the years wore on and the rail system grew rapidly, many
Victorians saw in the railroad the reflected image of the technical and moral
progress they so cherished. Samuel
Smiles was one notable example. A
self-educated man, his many books celebrated the feats of civil and mechanical
engineers, and the Victorian virtues their stories embodied. Writing in 1859, he described the railway
locomotive, one of their great feats, as nothing less than a moral force for
good.
The iron rail proved a magicians'
road. The locomotive gave a new celerity to time. It virtually reduced
Not everyone shared such sentiments.
Others saw something menacing in the changes ushered in by the iron
roads and smoky locomotives. Such were the thoughts of
the great poet, William Wordsworth, when he marshaled verse to protect Nature. One year after being named Poet Laureate of England, he
campaigned to stop the opening of a line from
Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault?
Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and 'mid the busy world
kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of
hope were blown,
Must perish;--how can they this
blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change
bemoan
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
'Mid his
paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright Scene,
from Orresthead
Given to the pausing traveler’s
rapturous glance:
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful
romance
Of nature; and, if human hearts be
dead,
Speak, passing winds; ye torrents,
with your strong
And constant voice, protest against
the wrong.
As with the coming of the industrial age generally, so with the
railway, Victorians reacted strongly to the transformation that was occurring
around them. But no matter how elegant
the protest, the growth of the rail system from the 1840s quickened its pace. The locomotive, powered by capitalism and the relentless
search for profitable investments, proved virtually unstoppable.
The pace of growth can be seen in the following figures for nine
decades, beginning in 1832. A surge of
rail construction in the 1840s ended in the 1850s as many companies went
bankrupt and feverish investment all but stopped. After a pause in the early and mid 1850s,
construction rose sharply again in the late 1850s and 1860s, continuing
thereafter at a gradually slowing rate to the eve of World War I. In the early years railway companies were
surprised by the strong but unanticipated growth of passenger traffic because
they expected that freight would be the
chief source of revenues and profits. As the receipts
show, revenue from freight pulled ahead of passenger traffic in 1850s, but both
kinds of receipts continued to climb thereafter without interruption.
|
YEAR |
Miles of rail lines open |
Passengers Conveyed |
Revenue from Passenger
traffic in 000s £ |
Revenue from Freight
traffic in 000s £ |
|
1832 |
166 |
|
|
|
|
1841 |
1775 |
|
|
|
|
1851 |
6802 |
|
|
|
|
1861 |
7821 |
145797 |
11246 |
12775 |
|
1871 |
10850 |
328553 |
17450 |
22392 |
|
1881 |
12807 |
558676 |
23346 |
30994 |
|
1891 |
14156 |
747862 |
29907 |
36765 |
|
1901 |
15303 |
1021179 |
39609 |
44895 |
|
1911 |
16200 |
1188204 |
46309 |
53921 |
Source:
adopted from Jack Simmons, The
railway in
So much for the
aggregate trends. What about the geography of rail
service as the system expanded on the national scale? And when did rail service become widespread
in rural areas?
In its first decades of development, the expanding rail system connected
major urban centers and the sites of natural resources required by
industrialization. Then, from the late 1860s on, the
iron roads began to reach more and more rural districts, as can be seen in
Table 2.[9] Composed
of data from a five percent random sample of the population in 1861, it
displays representative examples of the national pattern. In the rural district of Alton (Hampshire
country), for instance, the expansion of the rail network is evident in 1854,
1876, and 1914. A more typical case is that of Rochford in