Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Introduction
- 1 Africa, Imperial Communication and the Engineering Press
- 2 Engineers in Imperial London
- 3 Engineering Networks and the Great George Street Clique
- 4 Empire in the Institution of Civil Engineers
- 5 Explorer-Engineers and Gentlemen in the Public Eye
- 6 Vandals and Civilizers in Aswan and London
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - Africa, Imperial Communication and the Engineering Press
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Introduction
- 1 Africa, Imperial Communication and the Engineering Press
- 2 Engineers in Imperial London
- 3 Engineering Networks and the Great George Street Clique
- 4 Empire in the Institution of Civil Engineers
- 5 Explorer-Engineers and Gentlemen in the Public Eye
- 6 Vandals and Civilizers in Aswan and London
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The engineer is no mere technician. In the new gospel of industrial awakening the engineer is the missionary. The mechanic, not the farmer, is the modern pioneer. The hammer leads the plough into the wilderness.
Charles Buxton Going (1899)In their cultural history of technology Marsden and Smith rightly emphasize that ‘one of the products of the long nineteenth century in Britain was a plethora of engineering in print’. Indeed, by the late nineteenth century vibrant information milieus and communication systems had developed around the engineering profession. This chapter analyses how issues relating to the British empire were debated within these milieus and systems. The first section identifies channels through which the engineers who take centre stage in this book addressed issues of engineering and imperialism and it reconstructs a line of reasoning that enabled the members of the profession to argue for the indispensability of their contribution to British presence and future influence in Africa. The analysis then focuses on engineering periodicals – the publications that constituted the cornerstones in the vibrant communication milieu. Specifically, it analyses five influential journals and magazines edited from London, a location that in this period was emerging as the centre of an imperial press system in which news and information flowed back and forth between Britain and the colonies.
Engineering periodicals are particularly important for this study because these widely circulated publications connected large communities of engineers across distances by transferring knowledge, news and opinions relevant to reading engineers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- British Engineers and Africa, 1875–1914 , pp. 11 - 32Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014