Cao Yin
As the most important component of people's livelihood development, infrastructure construction has assumed a pivotal position in all countries around the world. In modern times, Western colonial empires and traditional Asian empires are modernizing their societies through various infrastructures. Looking back at history, the infiltration of Western colonialism in the East is also manifested in the infrastructure development of the colonies. Cao Yin, associate professor of the Department of History at Tsinghua University, has been thinking about the changes in modern Asian cities for many years, and in his latest book "Bicycles, Ports and Sewing Machines", he uses vivid details to analyze the social upheavals in Asia brought about by Western infrastructure and the new reshaping of ordinary people's daily lives, and also clarifies that infrastructure is not changing Asia in a one-way way, but is also being reinterpreted, transformed and utilized by Asia.
With the permission of the publisher, excerpts from the book's highlights of street traffic in British India to see how modern means of transport such as cars and bicycles influenced the city's urban construction during the colonial period.
Bicycles, Ports and Sewing Machines, by Cao Yin, Peking University Press, June 2022
In 1892, the maharaja of the Indian state of Patiala bought a steam-engine-powered tricycle from the French and brought it to India, thus beginning the Indian automobile era. By the beginning of the 20th century, cars had become very common on the streets of Major Cities in India. According to statistics, in 1908 there were 276 cars in Mumbai, 250 cars in Madras and 202 cars in Kolkata.
Motor Vehicles on the Streets of Kolkata, 1921 The pictures in this article are courtesy of Peking University Press
At about the same time that motor vehicles appeared on the streets of India, bicycles were also introduced to major cities in India. At the beginning of the 20th century, India imported about 35,000 bicycles a year from abroad, and from 1910 to 1946, a total of about 2.5 million bicycles were imported throughout India, the vast majority of which were produced and exported by British manufacturers.
In the milder mountainous regions of India, Westerners often used bicycles to relax and exercise, and family cycling outings were also a common form of leisure and entertainment at that time.
By the 1920s, Japanese-made bicycles began to enter the Indian market, and due to their lower prices, Japanese bicycles had nearly 10% of the Indian market share before the outbreak of World War II. At the same time, some Indian traders have also begun to assemble bicycles by recycling scrap and using home-made parts. As Japanese and locally produced bicycles circulate in large quantities in the market, their prices have gradually declined, and more and more Indian city professionals are starting to buy their own bicycles. For urban professionals, the modernity of bicycles is in line with the modernity represented by their occupations such as factory managers, civil servants, doctors, engineers, etc. As a result, bicycles not only facilitate their commuting between their homes and workplaces, but also reflect their identity as modern city dwellers.
Local civil servant riding a bicycle in northern India, 1908
When more and more Indians began to use bicycles, India's British colonial elite changed their view of bicycles. The colonial elite began to think it was inappropriate for Westerners to ride bicycles in India. They believe that cycling in India's humid and hot climate will make cyclists sweat so much that it is very "undignified". And because cycling does not have any privacy, the "unseemly" when Westerners ride bicycles will be observed by Indian passers-by. Because British colonial rule in India was based on the Indian imagination of the superiority of Western civilization, once this illusion was undermined by the "unseemly" of Westerners, the legitimacy of colonialism was lost. Based on these considerations, the colonial elite was no longer willing to use bicycles to travel, but instead used cars with better privacy. For the colonial elite, the automobile helped them avoid direct contact with the colonized, maintained their mystique, and thus maintained the legitimacy of colonial rule.
In addition to no longer using bicycles themselves, colonial elites further linked racist discourse and road safety issues to the identity of cyclists. In the first half of the 20th century, major Indian cities modernized major roads to facilitate the passage of motor vehicles, but to the surprise of the colonial authorities, a large number of non-motorized vehicles also appeared on the roads. As a result, unprecedented traffic chaos has been created. When the British scholar Margaret Read visited Kolkata in 1927, she found that the city's main roads were crowded with motor vehicles, bullock carts, bicycles, pedestrians and animals, and the sound of car whistles, the noise of roadside vendors, and the cries of animals completely shattered her imagination of the quiet and elegant life of the East.
Rickshaws on the streets of Madras, 1920s
The chaos of urban road traffic conditions has made traffic accidents more and more common. As early as 1908, the Kolkata police reported incidents of motor vehicles on the road colliding with pedestrians and causing casualties. By the 1920s, the number of fatalities and fatalities caused by traffic accidents was increasing throughout India. The police have also had to set up traffic accident investigation units to deal with similar cases. In 1931, a total of 797 people died in traffic accidents and another 6,611 were seriously injured in all of India, and as the number of motor vehicles increased, so did the number of accidents. By 1935, 1,309 people had been killed and 9,621 seriously injured in India. Although the number of motor vehicles in India was much lower than in the Uk at the time, the traffic accident rate in India during this period was three times that of the UK.
For such frequent traffic accidents and the rising number of casualties, the Motor Vehicle Insurance Committee of India believes that this is mainly the responsibility of motor vehicle drivers, who are driving at speed, overloading, lack of safety awareness and lack of maintenance of the motor vehicle itself, posing a danger to other road users. In addition, the committee also believes that urban road managers have not effectively promoted traffic safety awareness and road traffic management. In short, for most outside observers, the government, as well as the owners of motor vehicles, should be primarily responsible for most accidents.
Buffalo cart on the streets of Kolkata, 1933
In the discourse of the colonial authorities, however, the vast majority of street traffic accidents were caused by cyclists. The government considers bicycles to be a relatively low-end means of transportation that needs to be powered by human power. Bicycles can reach very high speeds without any protection for the cyclist's body, so this means of transport is dangerous for the cyclist himself and other road users. In addition, because most of the cyclists were ordinary Indians, these people were considered by the colonial authorities to be impulsive and irrational. When the "uncivilized" Indians were combined with "low-end and dangerous" technology, the colonial authorities naturally associated it with the perpetrators of traffic accidents. Therefore, when a bicycle collides with a motor vehicle and an accident occurs, the traffic police will in most cases attribute the responsibility to the ignorance and recklessness of the cyclist, the injured or killed cyclist is considered to be "self-inflicted", and the motor vehicle that hits the person is considered innocent.
Based on this understanding, the Indian colonial government began to carry out large-scale traffic rules education in the daily life of ordinary Indians, and in a 1939 madras government announcement, the authorities believed that raising the traffic awareness of cyclists was the most important measure to reduce traffic accidents. This kind of traffic awareness education needs to be carried out not only by the police, but also by the participation of all members of society in their daily lives. In fact, throughout the first half of the 20th century, Indian colonial authorities tried to instill traffic laws into the daily behavior of ordinary Indians —pamphlets with easy-to-understand pictures of traffic rules were often distributed freely to pedestrians, traffic rules were introduced in almost every issue of the newspaper, and schools educated students on traffic rules in the classroom.
One of the most important measures the government has tried to control street traffic is to expand the size and authority of the traffic police so that they can educate and punish those who violate traffic rules (often in the form of fines), but this disciplinary mechanism has opened up space for the traffic police to make profits, and the traffic police on the streets of Indian cities have gradually formed a kind of complicity with motor vehicle drivers, cyclists, and even pedestrians , the latter evading discipline and punishment through bribery, while the former regards traffic laws as a tool to blackmail road users. Until the end of British colonial rule in India, the street traffic in India was still as disorganized as Reed had seen in Calcutta in 1927, without traces of modernity, and from this chaos one can see that the street traffic in British India is not a top-down modernization story, but the result of the game and fusion of imperialist ideas, elites, modernity technology, and grassroots demands and wisdom in the daily life of Indian streets.
Editor-in-charge: Zhu Zhe
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang