![Automotive Empire](https://img.perlego.com/book-covers/4218387/9781501775376_300_450.webp)
Automotive Empire
How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa
Andrew Denning
- 324 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Only available on web
Automotive Empire
How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa
Andrew Denning
About This Book
In Automotive Empire, Andrew Denning uncovers how roads and vehicles began to transform colonial societies across Africa but rarely in the manner Europeans expected. Like seafaring ships and railroads, automobiles and roads were more than a mode of transportâthey organized colonial spaces and structured the political, economic, and social relations of empire, both within African colonies and between colonies and the European metropole.
European officials in French, Italian, British, German, Belgian, and Portuguese territories in Africa shared a common challengeâthe transport problem. While they imagined that roads would radiate commerce and political hegemony by collapsing space, the pressures of constructing and maintaining roads rendered colonial administration thin, ineffective, and capricious. Automotive empire emerged as the European solution to the transport problem, but revealed weakness as much as it extended power.
As Automotive Empire reveals, motor vehicles and roads seemed the ideal solution to the colonial transport problem. They were cheaper and quicker to construct than railroads, overcame the environmental limitations of rivers, and did not depend on the recruitment and supervision of African porters. At this pivotal moment of African colonialism, when European powers transitioned from claiming territories to administering and exploiting them, automotive empire defined colonial states and societies, along with the brutal and capricious nature of European colonialism itself.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Colonial Transport Problem
- Part I Experiments and Spectacles, 1890sâ1920s
- Part II Interwar Models and Programs
- Conclusion: The Lives and Afterlives of Automotive Empire
- Notes
- Archives and Publications
- Index