Dan Snow's History Hit - How Steam Power Remade the World

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

John Darwin joined me on the podcast to discuss how steam power reshaped our cities and our seas, and forged a new world order.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about one of the most important technological breakthroughs in the history of the world on this episode. We're talking to John Darwin. He was a legend at Oxford University when I was studying there. He's been a professor of global history, of imperial history there for years. And he's written many, many books on Britain and Europe's empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His latest book is about how steam power remade the world. And he describes to me in this podcast how steam power transformed the world.

I mean, harnessing the elemental forces of nature to produce almost unlimited power. Absolutely fascinating stuff. And he's very convincing on just how instrumental steam power was in that first great era of globalisation. If you want to watch more programmes about the British Empire, about European empires, 19th century history, or frankly any history, go to History Hit TV. It's like Netflix, but it's just history. So it's for proper history fans. And we've got shows on there from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age to the Digital Age. If you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free in your second month for just one pound, a euro or dollar. So after you've listened to this

wonderful podcast by John Darwin, the acclaimed historian, please head over to History at TV and subscribe. All the back episodes of this podcast are there as well. They'll be supporting everything we do, which is a lot at the moment, lots of exciting stuff going on. So enjoy this podcast. All about steam power. John, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. I was thinking the other day as I was lifting boxes at the extraordinary revolution that steam power was. I mean, can you give me a sense of how it replaced human bones and gristle and muscle with almost effectively unlimited power? Well, I suppose because of the way in which you think until steam. Indeed, yes, we relied upon human muscle, animal muscle. We relied upon a wind,

which could be highly variable. We relied upon currents in rivers and at sea. And all those things, of course, as you say, they could be easily exhausted or fail to deliver when you needed them. Steam provides, once you have access to the fuel, coal, it provides a nonstop, really unceasing, untiring source of power and energy. And that makes an enormous difference, not only in industry, but of course famously in transport. Both at sea and over land. So all of a sudden, the kind of limitations imposed by how much manpower you had available to you could be overcome. And that's an extraordinary benefit, especially when you think of settings where manpower will be limited,

either by the fact you can't get people there or because of things like disease or hunger or other sorts of limitation on manpower. So in that sense, it is absolutely revolutionary. Was its geographical nature, was it quite nucleated in terms of that initial first wave industrialisation? Was it notable? Was there sort of little islands of steam activity that then vastly outstripped neighbouring territories? Oh, yes. I mean, the extraordinary thing about the steam revolution, what I call steam globalization, is you have an

absolutely unprecedented concentration of mechanical power and energy and all the things that go with that in one virtually small part of the world, Northwest Europe, and of course, above all in Britain. So this is something which you don't see in any previous era in world history. And it remains like that really for a surprisingly long time. I try to describe in the book why it's so hard for countries like China or even Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, or other places outside the West to really access steam power properly. And it means, yes, that the delay in getting steam power to them is probably 40 or 50 years. What are the barriers to entry for steam power? You mentioned, I mean, is it hard to create cylinders?

Is it coal? Is it energy? Why did Turkey, China, why do they struggle with steam power? Partly, I think, because, well, mainly perhaps because, although you might say steam power is not a very difficult idea to grasp, it can be difficult to grasp if you have, as the Chinese had, a rather different tradition of understanding and drawing and, you know, creating diagrams of how machines work. And for some reason, it's very strange. They weren't equipped with a kind of technical drawing to understand how the dynamics of a steam

engine worked. But I think another perhaps more serious problem is that setting up a steam engine requires you to have very precisely engineered elements to it, whether it's the boilers or the tubing, or particularly the means of delivering steam power to locomotion. It all has to be quite carefully engineered. And the number of skilled artisans able to do that is relatively limited. And it's extraordinarily dominated by artisans from Britain, many of whom, of course, emigrate to America.

So it's something which spreads very quickly in America as well. Without that artisan base, it's very hard to maximise your use or to increase your use of steam power very much. Okay, this is the big one. I'm afraid I'm going to hit you with this now. Why Britain? Why the North East? Why Northumbria, County Durham? Why do these artisans emerge? And I've heard about as many reasons for this as there are reasons for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, from accessible coal with the right amount of sulfur in it near the surface. I mean, why is it this extraordinary little island, unremarkable island, why did it all happen here? Well, it's not so unremarkable. I mean, historians have been struggling with this question of why the northwest of Europe was able to achieve higher living standards, greater productivity in other parts of the world. And in many ways, you can see that the diffusion of artisan skills in Britain is actually very widespread right back well before we really encounter steam.

right back well before we really encounter steam. So there is quite a wide base of artisan skills to draw upon and then to, you might say, then to mobilize when you have new sorts of machinery. I mean, just think of the way in which, for example, the skills of running a steam engine are not unrelated to those of managing a large windmill or watermill. A lot of it is rather similar. So that you've got a big artisan base. And then, as you say, of course, the other thing is you have literally energy to throw away. Coal is extremely cheap in many parts of England, because England has got, and Scotland, because they have, and South Wales, because they have such extensive coal fields. You can explore, experiment with the use of coal in a way which, in countries which,

well, like China especially, where fuel has become very expensive, you have a kind of fuel economy which minimises or seeks to minimise the wastage of fuel. In Britain, those constraints don't apply. So we've got lots and lots of fuel, you've got the artisans in the right place, you've got things like patent law and a legal system and a bit of venture capital money in it all it also you get this cocktail of virtuous or whichever adjective you want to describe it circle what is the effect on britain's geopolitical clout because of course what's interesting is britain's a kind of globally hegemonic power or on the way to being one without massive application of steam so what does steam do

for britain well i mean you can say that britain a global hegemon. I think that's an exaggeration until you get into the 19th century. Britain certainly had quite extensive colonial holdings, mostly in the New World, to a very limited extent indeed in the East until the late, very late 18th century. So yes, there was the basis for being a global hegemon in that period. What steam does is allows you to maintain your lead over other parts of the world, especially, of course, in the manufacture of textiles, which is the most widely traded goods in this period, right through the 18th and 19th century. So having penetrated some economies in the Eastern world, particularly India and China, which were very productive economies in many ways, you can maintain your industrial leader over them

and indeed extend it because the remarkable thing is that the gap between economic performance and prosperity between Northwest Europe and also including, of course, the United States or parts of the US and Asia and Africa, that gap goes on widening until quite late in the 20th century. And it's driven in part by the enormous advantage which steam power had conferred. Because it gives you, among other things, of course, not just industrial power, but the capacity to penetrate other parts of the world in a much more far-reaching way,

much more quickly and much more cheaply than you have been able to in the age of wind and the current. So there have been various waves of globalisation before. We've had brilliant academics on this podcast talking about the globalisation of the 11th century, Silk Road. Why is this wave of globalisation? Why did steam make the world even smaller and more connected? And how is it different? Well, because steam means that those parts of the world which lay only a few miles from any usable waterway could suddenly be connected up to an international trading economy.

If you remember that even after a railway arrived, it was out-calculated that if you were trying to produce something bulky and you were more than 20 miles from a railway station, it was virtually pointless to try and produce it because you couldn't make a profit. The cost of getting it to the railway was so great that you would no longer make a profit. Now that applied, of course, to waterways as well. So prior to steam and prior to the railway, vast areas of the world were simply lay outside the reach of an international economy of exchange. They are brought into it, although, again, there are limitations,

in the course of the 19th century, particularly in the later 19th century. So that hugely extends, you might say, the reach of global exchange of all kinds, not just, of course, commerce, not just goods, but also many other things that flow around with globalization. That's probably the most striking feature. And, of course, you have to remember also that once you have steam ships able to make numerous voyages in the course of a year,

as compared with usually sailing ships on longer journeys, the volume available, the space available to move goods around also expands enormously as well. So that reduces costs and increases the possibility of exchange of bulk goods, and which then again, drive, let's say, commercial globalization. You look at these case studies, these great cities that we think of as fulcrum of the modern world, whether it's Shanghai, Mumbai, a place like that, that you argue are the great legacy

of this age. Can you tell me a bit more about them? Well, what these port cities do, I mean,, I spent a lot of time looking at the history of empires. And what strikes you after a while, particularly if you stare at a map long enough, is that much of the business of empire is actually passing down a fairly narrow set of corridors over sea and indeed over land. But certainly the most important ones, particularly in terms of exchanges between Europe and other parts of the world, those corridors enter continents through port cities. And what happens in the 19th century is that when you have the combination of steamship and railway,

it produces what is actually quite a small number of great hub cities. These are the places where the railway system meets steamship because these are the places where the railway system meets steamship, because these are the places which then are able to invest in large harbours and all the equipment needed for the efficient exchange of goods and the efficient management of railway systems. So these cities emerged very rapidly in the course of the 19th century as really enormous cities with a vast range of facilities, vast range of activities, vast range of skills,

and large populations. And they're the ones which really are, you might say, the bridgehead between an expanding international economy and new hinterlands in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, which have been brought into that global economy. That's their role, that's their importance. And they are, of course, fascinating, not just because of their commercial role, but because they're also a cultural frontier, a cultural and political front line as well. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan

in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Well, exactly. Talk about culturally and politically. Presumably then that sets up, if you look at, for example, what we would call Rangoon in Myanmar.

I mean, you get these places where there are then huge issues around that port, that area of activity and the hinterland. Yeah, yeah, there are. Of course there are. Because the striking feature of almost all these port cities that I look at, I've got eight outside Europe, The striking feature of almost all these port cities that I look at, I've got eight outside Europe, is that the people who are really running their commercial economies and also usually playing the biggest role in their politics are not locals, they're outsiders. I mean, even in Shanghai, the merchant elite come from other parts of, not that far away, but from other ports in China, like Ningpo or even Canton. And it's certainly very striking in the case of, say, Bombay,

that the commercial elite come, they are Parsis, from further up the West Indian coast. And, of course, you have the European element as well, who vary greatly in their importance in these different port cities. So that, first of all, creates a sort of a natural tension between these war local elites and European outsiders. But then what you find happening in the course of the later 19th century, early 20th century, is that these cities tend also to attract large scale immigration. Rangoon is an obvious example, it becomes really an Indian city, just as Singapore in Malaysia, Malaya, becomes a Chinese city.

So there's another source, you might say, of potential cultural conflict or tension. But the other element as well is that when they industrialize, that draws in other populations. I mean, Bombay is the best example of this. Once Bombay starts to industrialize, it attracts a large-scale population from the hinterland of the Deccan. And these are people who have very little in common with the Parsi elite, or indeed with the Gujarati Muslims, who on the whole, between those two of them, have dominated the Indian side of Bombay's commercial life and cultural life. So there's a kind of, they are cockpits in which different populations,

different social and cultural groups mingle, and to some extent, of course, have to work out conflicts of interest and conflicts of ambition. At the moment, we're living through an era of digital malaise. People are very worried about the internet, both in terms of the destruction of traditional working practices, the propagation of fake news and the threat to democracy. Do you see steam provoking quite a backlash politically, socioeconomically? And how quickly does that emerge? And dare I ask if any of

that is to do with the pollution it gives off that we now know might prove catastrophic to human civilization? I haven't come across much sign that people were worried about steam pollution, certainly in the cities I've looked at. But yes, of course, there is a backlash against steam mechanization. And the most brilliant exponent of this is Gandhi. Gandhi says, in effect, when he produces his great manifesto against British rule in India,

in the Swaraj, in the very early, the first decade of the 20th century, he says what we're contending with is a kind of, well, he's really describing a very inhumane form of mechanical civilisation which has to be rejected. Otherwise, you know, in a sense, this is what allows the outsiders, the British, to rule us, is this, you know, inhumane, mechanised civilisation.

We've got to get away from it. And, of course, what is well known now is that many of Gandhi's ideas were, in aane, mechanized civilization. You've got to get away from it. And of course, what is well known now is that many of Gandhi's ideas were, in a way, a reworking of ideas written about and expressed by Tolstoy, where, again, you have this reaction against what is seen as an industrial civilization characterized by class conflict, by impoverishment, by alienation,

and a sort of installation of a plutocratic class who lacked feeling, lacked social solidarity. So all those ideas, I think, are certainly around. And they spread into, you might say, the regions penetrated by Western commerce and Western empires in the later 19th century. And they fuel reactions of the kind that Gandhi expresses so vividly. And you can see them in China. You can see them in other parts of Asia as well.

Does harnessing steam, having power, does that confer power? I'm thinking about internally now coming back to the UK. Do we see a reshaping of the British elite in aristocracy? I mean, does in the way that, again, today, technology and the tech barons are now so prominent, not just in the economic sphere, but increasing to politics as well, other areas. Does steam confer great power to individuals within societies as well? Certainly, I mean, it does create a class of very wealthy industrial entrepreneurs. But I think, again, as has been quite often pointed out, although these people do come to exercise quite a lot of social power, particularly within great industrial cities,

something like Armstrong in Newcastle, or some of the great textile manufacturers in parts of West Yorkshire or Lancashire, that if you think about the national stage, on the whole, their role is relatively modest. And compared, say, with those who are exerting influence through financial power in London, who tend to have much closer contacts with government and with politics and ministers, probably true to say that industrialists in this great era up to 1930 had rather less power than you might expect if you thought that steam was really going to be, really was the great source of British power.

The other factor, of course, is that the landed aristocracy is really canny in many ways. Landed aristocracy also enjoyed enormous wealth from its possession of, where it was true, of its possession of coal fields, or from like the earls of Derby, where they owned vast swathes of what became Liverpool, or South Lancashire, and drew the rents from these, so they became extraordinarily wealthy as well. also, I mean, the capacity to marry into new wealth. So oddly enough, I think that though you might have expected the Industrial Revolution in Britain to produce a great change in the distribution of political power, you know, even as late as 1914, it only seems to have happened to a rather limited extent. And the professional classes, and I might say those who have derived their incomes from banking and finance and so on, are still in very powerful positions. Yes, it's all bringing back happy memories. Is it Kane and Hopkins talking about British imperialism when they said that these oily northern industrialists were excluded from the corridors of power in Whitehall?

So you mentioned the end of the period there. I mean, I think we should talk about hard power as well as economic power and the ability to make textiles. I mean, what is so profound about the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th century is the ability of humans to kill each other with monumental success in unlimited numbers. That is surely a huge part of this as well. It is. I think if you ask, I mean, people have often pointed out that what happens in the later 19th century is that if you just take the expansion of Europe's colonial empires, that they are able now to kill any opponents very efficiently, and sometimes in quite large numbers. So that's the ability to project military power is certainly striking as a novelty, I mean, in the later 19th

century. And if you think about it, I mean, in the later 19th century. And if you think about it, I mean, it's because now you can deliver an expeditionary force by steamer to any part of the world within a matter of a few weeks. And then, if like Kitchener, you are going to try and recapture or capture, shall we say, Khartoum and defeat the Mahdi, you can build a railway over the desert and deliver an army in a region which 30, 40 years earlier would have been effectively unreachable by a British army. So steam power, the railway and the steamship, I think are really just as important in delivering a sort of physical punch in different parts of the world for Western armies anyway, of physical punch in different parts of the world for Western armies anyway, as perhaps, you know, the use of the machine gun or more powerful rifles or more powerful firearms and artillery. Partly because, especially in remote places, carrying heavy weaponry, even carrying large numbers of bullets for a machine gun is so difficult, unless you've got good roads, which

you on the whole won't have. I mean, somebody studied this, that using a machine gun is so difficult unless you've got a good roads which you on the whole won't have but i mean somebody studied this that using a machine gun for example in the war in war colonial wars in nigeria armies didn't do it they used it for 10 seconds because then they ran out of ran out of shells and so oddly enough you know having the maxim gun could be useful where you could supply it but where you couldn't resupply it, it was rather limited use. But getting there in the first place was something that by steamship or railway, that was an enormous acquisition of physical power. Since the invention of bronze, as a historian of empire and of global history, and having just written this monumental book, how important do you think this steam revolution is in the great sweep of human history? Well, as you say, I mean,

it is quite difficult because you open up all sorts of other questions about which had the most far-reaching effects. That's difficult. But I think there's no doubt in my mind that in the vast sweep of pre-modern history, steam comes as a really dramatic acceleration of the capacity to exchange goods across the world, to move across the world, and indeed, especially, I think, to be able to assume a regularity and frequency of contact between the first reaches of the world. That is really revolutionary. And you've been able to travel across the world in the past, in the very distant past, but it took a very long time. And secondly, it was no there was

no certainty about arriving at any particular point therefore messages could be exchanged but they could be exchanged only with very great deal of uncertainty about whether they would get there or when they would get there steam transforms that i think in a most dramatic way but the other thing it does as i was saying earlier is there's no previous era, I think, when a particular technology handed so much power to one part of the world, which was the West, or particularly Northwest Europe, and what I been a number of different locations in the world, all of which have got broadly comparable technological achievements or technological capacity. But this is different. And it confers, I say, this extraordinary world changing power, which only begins to unravel, really, I suppose, from about the middle of the 20th century, and then has accelerated, of course, sharply in our own time. John Darwin, thank you very much

for coming on the podcast. What's the book called? It's called Unlocking the World, Port Cities and Globalisation in the Age of Steam. Thank you very much indeed. Good luck with it. Thank you.

OK, bye-bye. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart,

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