Even Steam Engines are "racist" it seems

Good to know public money is being spent on this

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ource=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

 

Try as I might I can't find anything in here that comes even close to suggesting that 'steam engines are racist'…

https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/steam-slavery-railways-research/

Maybe you want to tone down the histrionics a bit?

Simon

 

You could try reading the article.

Quote "Last year, emails revealed fears the train that carried Winston Churchill's coffin in 1965 could become the focus of 'protest activity' as a result of his links to 'colonialism and empire' " Unquote

Of course steams trains themselves are not racist, but according to Critical Race Theory, all white people are inherently rascist. Therefore the newly enlightened "woke" generation sees everything, including the invention and use of the steam engine, as facilitating this.

Hence the perceived need for reinterpretation of exhibits in the National Railway Museum.

The same thing is happening in museums all over the country, using vast sums of public money.

Whether one agrees with it or not is another matter.

Me I just like trains.

 

As a certain TV presenter was wont to say "The worlds gone mad!!!" Oh for the day the "woke" generation wake up and learn what "Real life" is all about

 

Looks like an interesting research project to me


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Excellent! You are the man for me! I have an interesting thesis as to why horse manure was an in fact an instrument of repression used by colonialists in the 19th Century. All I need to £9000, so if you could see your way to sending me a cheque.........................

 

Personally, I don’t see what’s controversial about this.

It seems pretty obvious that the development of railways, alongside other technological developments in the mid/late 19th century, significantly shortened travel times and reduced their costs. These technologies were also used by European imperial powers to subjugate populations and transport raw materials in a way never done before in human history. Similar processes also took place internally within empires and nation states.

Railways played an important part in the development of those processes and its only right that this researched and understood.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Your post is IMO an argument looking for an event to hang it on.

The £9,000 is joint university research funding, not the Railway Museum's. It is the equivalent of one year's tuition fee for one postgrad student's research. Ignoring the puff, it's a minor research grant.

As you say its pretty uncontroversial. It's worth looking back to the original source, rather than the Telegraph https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/steam-slavery-railways-research/

Patrick

 

Why is it "only right"? That is your judgement call not anyone elses. I would suggest the vast majority of people are not interested in such woke revisionism especially by a publically funded body.

The money could be better spent preserving original artifacts, which is the core pupose of a Museum after all.

 

Well documented historical processes aren’t ‘woke revisionism’. I suggest you go outside for a walk and cool off, it’s a lovely day outside.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You're missing their other legal purposes in the National Heritage Act 1983, viz

"(c) secure that the objects are available to persons seeking to inspect them in connection with study or research,

(d) generally promote the public’s enjoyment and understanding of science and technology and of the development of those subjects, both by means of the Board’s collections and by such other means as they consider appropriate, and

(e ) provide education, instruction and advice, and carry out research"

Museums' core purpose is to educate. Otherwise they're just big sheds of stuff.

Patrick

 

Then there is the case of Afghanistan.

There was/is the desire by the British/Russians/USSR/Whoever to build railways BUT it involves agreements which successive Afghan Governments have been unwilling or unable to give. In other places the agreements were obtained by the British/French or whoever simply taking the country over.

 

They are. They are learning about the role that the British Railways industry played in supporting the colonial system. I am pretty sure that this was real life for people in Glasgow and Manchester who were working for NBL or BP. I am pretty sure it was real life for people living in the British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean etc.

When we wax lyrical at a Garrett in South Africa, or a narrow gauge ex-plantation loco it seems quite reasonable to look beyond just the engine and to look at the political, economic and social system that they were part of. The engines only exist because of the system. The Garrett etc only exists because of colonialism, so to ignore the role of colonialism makes no sense.

Frankly the article is just a dog whistle. Much better that people get angry about a tiny university project than politicians on the take etc.

 

Patrick

I accept your points and refreshingly they aren't made from a self righteous standpoint.

If the Museums core purpose is to educate, then surely it needs to do this empirically. That is look at the impact of the steam engine and its uses around the world as a whole, both good and bad.

The good would be that by facillatating trade and communications, enabling populations to be more mobile and educated, to enable the founding of cities and towns, railways raised the standard of living of those populations in other countries overall.

Yet I don't see the Museum funding any reseach into the positive aspects of our import of the Industrial Revolution, just the negative, which says to me that they have succumbed to the trendy anti capitalist agenda of the Woke. They don't want to educate us, they want to impose an interpretation that requires us to feel guilty about our past, by associating Colonialism with Slavery and nothing else.

That isn't Education that is Re Education.

Coming to a Railway Museum near you.

Don't all Rush.

 

Whilst I agree it is in itself a "tiny university project"; it is just another example of the on-going attempts at historical "revisionism" that is becoming prevalent. The attempt to rewrite history to the way some wish it was, not how it was. It just annoys the $@*% out of me!

 

I think the positive aspects of railways are well researched and promulgated, there are approx a dozen programmes on the TV showing the positive impact of the railways over the past few years.

The railways had a number of detrimental impacts, yet these get little or no coverage.

I'm not sure what harm can be done by attempting to identify the positive and negative impacts of any change.

 

But all history is subject to debate and revision. How do we know that the established narrative wasn't written to show history how the authors wished it to have been rather than how it was if we don't revisit the subject with different eyes?

If the empirical base is sound, if the methodology is appropriate then what is the problem if the conclusions tell us something different to what we previously thought?

I am reminded of the time that someone tried to explain to me that an executed war criminal wasn't so bad because he had saved as many people as he had had killed. I was and remain unconvinced by that argument. It is not a zero sum game where the positive cancel out the negatives.

 

There is a vast literature on the impact of the railways on the economy going back to authors such as Dyos and Aldcroft on the economy side, Jack Simmons more on the social and geographical impacts side, Gary Hawke and more recently Nicholas Crafts. There is the Journal of Transport History edited for many years by Terry Gourvish.

Compared with that massive and serious effort, this is a tiny pinprick. I suppose given what has happened with the NT and its houses it's not too surprising. I've visited a lot of historic houses and when you ask where the money came from, it is usually land, coal or trade in which the slave trade is often a part.

I suppose Churchill is a convenient famous name to hang a story on, but actually, 34029, 30865 and 7923 would be better ones to start with if they really want to go down this route. There may be others......

 

I'm a history graduate. There's no one immutable history, history isn't fixed. It's perpetually subject to review and reassessment. 'Revisionism' is used as a pejorative term, but it isn't. Nor is it one way traffic. Using slavery as an example as the OP included it, the role of Africans in the transatlantic trade and black ownership of slaves in the West Indies are but two areas where history is being revised. Should one not look again at the histories of Marwick (1960s left wing social history) or the British-Marxist school of the same period, or does that count as an "attempt to rewrite history to the way some wish it was, not how it was"?

I for one would be interested, for example, to read research taking the brilliant work done on compensating slave owners on abolition to see how much of it capitalised Britain's railway mania in the following couple of decades.

And to put it into a contemporary context, look at current Chinese investment in railways and ports in East Africa. That can (I would argue it should) be seen in a colonial context.

Be annoyed. Be very annoyed. History is meant to annoy the $@*% out of you.

Patrick

 

The Museum isn't funding this, a university consortium is. Any comment on the balance of research would have to look at all their research projects over time, but to me it seems that you've formed a conclusion without having done that.

I visited the museum in York in September, I'd argue that it is educating on the things you describe through a freight exhibition, exported British built locomotive and more. One can always disagree on bits of it (and I posted on Nat Pres afterwards I thought the goods exhibits could be better joined up) but, overall, I think it absolutely fulfills that part of its remit to look at the 'good' of railways. By contrast, I struggle to think of anything it exhibits that shows a 'bad' side. I've no problem with that, but there's a good reason for it to support academic research into wider aspects of railways do it can educate empirically.

I'd be very surprised by the way if both the museums and universities hadn't had approval from their ethics committees. Even undergraduate research does.

That, I'm afraid, says more to me about an agenda that you have than it does about the Railway Museum's minor involvement in a minor bit of research. It's where the empirical element will come in. I strongly suspect it wouldn't be what you describe and fear.

Patrick