Respectability on the Line

Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways

Mattie Armstrong-Price (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

234 Seiten

2026
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-42155-4 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Februar 2026)
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Respectability on the Line offers a social and cultural history of railway labor in Britain and colonial India from the 1840s through World War I. The book treats the railway industry as a microcosm through which to study the history of capitalism in the liberal imperial era. Using company records, Mattie Armstrong-Price shows how executives shaped the domestic and working lives of higher-grade employees with an eye to cultivating their respectability. Meanwhile workers' writings reveal how railway towns provided opportunities for some employees to maintain non-heteronormative living arrangements. The book tracks these histories of everyday life while also outlining stories of early trade unionism. In Britain, railway unionists established benefit funds that mimicked company-sponsored provident funds, while in colonial India workers fought to gain access to company benefits on equal terms. This comparative study shows how industrial labor was made through conflict, subversion, and accommodation across an uneven imperial field.

Mattie Armstrong-Price is Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One. Railway Paternalism and the Making of Sexual Cultures of Labor, 1840s–1860s
1. Imperfect Technologies of Moralization: Railway Paternalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain
2. Strains of Permissiveness, Fields of Force: Railway Paternalism in Colonial India After 1857

Part Two. Making Railway Unionism between Britain and Colonial India, 1870s–1880s
3. Paternal Figures: The Politics of Race and Gender in Early Railway Unionism

Part Three. Mass Movements and the Making of Social Liberalism, 1890s–1910s
4. Laboring behind the Curtain: Industrial Unionism and Social Liberal Governance in Britain
5. Conveying Grievances in the Vernacular: Nationalist-Aligned Unionism and Social Liberal Reform in Colonial India

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	24.2.2026
Reihe/Serie	Berkeley Series in British Studies ; 24
Zusatzinfo	8 b-w images and 1 table
Verlagsort	Berkerley
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Makroökonomie
ISBN-10	0-520-42155-8 / 0520421558
ISBN-13	978-0-520-42155-4 / 9780520421554
Zustand	Neuware