Railways and the Making of the Modern World: India, Africa, and the United States

Railways remade the modern world—collapsing distance, creating national markets, extracting colonial wealth, and drawing millions into brutal construction labor. This seminar examines railways as a lens for studying empire, capitalism, and social transformation across India, Africa, and the United States. Rather than treating each region as a separate case, students think comparatively, asking how the same technology produced radically different outcomes depending on who held power, whose land was taken, and whose labor was exploited. Topics include colonial financing and route selection, the reorganization of social hierarchies, resistance movements from the Pullman Strike to West African railway worker unions, and the uneven economic consequences of railway expansion. "Readings" include films treated as primary sources. Students complete weekly journals and a final research paper or documentary film analysis.