Re-Designing Africa: Railways and Globalization in the Era of the New Imperialism

Maria Paula Diogo () and Bruno J. Navarro ()
Additional contact information
Maria Paula Diogo: NOVA University of Lisbon
Bruno J. Navarro: NOVA University of Lisbon

Chapter 5 in Technology and Globalisation, 2018, pp 105-128 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In this chapter we propose to discuss the strategies deployed by Portugal, a peripheral country in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, to use its African Empire as a token for asserting its position in the European arena. Beyond diplomatic and political demarches, technology—and particularly the building of railways—was at the core of the Portuguese imperial agenda, determining the way African territories were immersed in the global market. Engineers played a central role in this process by discussing and eventually deciding the layout of the railway lines that were at the core of new anthropogenic landscapes, thus establishing an economic hierarchy among geographical spaces not only within the colonies, but also in a worldwide context. We will use two case studies, one in Angola and one in Mozambique, to argue that technological choices in the colonies were strongly pervaded by political and economic European agendas.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-319-75450-5_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783319754505

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-75450-5_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().