Decolonising the Master's Gift: Britain's Railways, Decolonisation, and the International Market 1945-1975

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This project examines the complex relationship between Britain's railway concerns, both nationalised industry and private manufacturers, and the wider world during and after decolonisation. Once an essential industry both at home and in the colonies, Britain's post-war railways faced an existential crisis as the process of decolonisation forced them to renegotiate their place in formerly closed markets abroad that they had once dominated. Pairing Railway Museum collections with external archives, and enhancing holdings through the acquisition of new and diverse oral histories, this project explores the changing links between Britain's railway industry at home and its (former) colonies abroad. This was a period when both Britain and its railways were in flux. New ideas, new technologies, and new personnel were rapidly changing working practices. The fraught process of adapting to this new post-colonial world had a profound impact on railway industries at home and abroad. This PhD project diversifies the history of post-war rail in Britain, placing it within wider developing studies of the post-colonial world and re-examining the place of such a key industry, formerly a lynch-pin of colonial development and planning, in a post-Imperial age.In recent years there has been a firm push-back against the notion that railways were a 'positive benefit' of colonialism, with the role of companies, manufactures, engineers, and colonial elites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries re-examined. Yet no work has properly addressed how Britain's railways navigated the decolonising and post-colonial world. Major companies, which had dominated the export market of the Imperial age, folded rapidly. Others had to adapt to market their expertise not only in rolling stock but in signalling, systems, telecommunications, and other changing technologies. Urged by successive governments to tackle new global markets, forced suddenly to compete for contracts in former colonies which had been former closed-shops for their goods, and trying to manage rapid technological change and competition, the railways offer a compelling lens through which to understand the relationship between Britain and the new post-war, post-colonial world. The post-war period was one in which both Britain and its railways were in flux. New ideas, new technologies, and new personnel were rapidly changing working practices. The fraught process of adapting to this new post-colonial world had profound impact on railway industries at home and abroad. This PhD project diversifies the history of post-war rail in Britain, placing it within wider developing studies of the post-colonial world and re-examining the place of such a key industry, formerly a lynch-pin of colonial development and planning, in a post-imperial age.