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Antecedents of the Burma Road: British Plans for a Burma-China Railway in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Ralph C. Croizier
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Extract

Among the most obvious and durable monuments to the colonial age in Asia are the great engineering projects which have permanently transformed the physical and economic geography of the continent. Many of these have an interesting history of their own, both in the political and commercial history of the country building them and on the level of international politics. This is true not only for such successfully completed projects as the Suez Canal or the Trans-Siberian Railway, but also for great schemes which were never realized. In Southeast Asia the long-discussed Kra Canal is the most famous instance of the latter, but it is not unique. Throughout most of the second half of the Nineteenth Century the British Government and especially the British business community dallied with the idea of a rail link between the Bay of Bengal and the interior provinces of China. Those familiar with the building of the Burma Road will understand the enormous engineering problems involved in such a plan. But for most of the Nineteenth Century geographic knowledge of Southeast Asia was extremely vague and the lure of a several thousand mile shortcut to the perennially fascinating markets of China exerted a strong pull on the imagination of a commercial nation. Ultimately, international political complications and sound economic logic killed ven the idea of such a railway. But the light it throws on government — business relations within the British Empire and on imperial rivalries in Southeast Asia makes the story of the first Burma Road, the one that was never built, well worth the telling.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , September 1962 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1962

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References

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