Abstract
Reviewed by : Geoffrey Channon, University of the West of England
It is only in the last decade or so that scholars have come to recognise the long-run historical importance of inter-modal competition and cooperation. The historiography had earlier tended to focus on particular modes, especially but not only, railways and single countries. This volume, as the title suggests, promises a much wider, more ambitious perspective – the changing relationships between rail and road from the nineteenth century to the present day. The volume takes in the experience of five countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy, with a number of cross-references to others.
The main contours of change are plain. In the nineteenth century it was the railways that disturbed the dominance of the road carriers, especially on long-distance passenger traffic and long-haul freight. In the twentieth century, the positions were reversed, especially with the state sponsorship of motorways and inter-regional highways, the de-regulation of road carriers, and the container revolution. In the present day we are witnessing another shift, one that favours rail, especially passenger traffic. The context is a range of factors including road congestion, environmental policies, and the development of high-speed rail systems.
With the focus today on publishing articles in top-rated journals, edited collections of scholarly essays seem less important than they once were, which is regrettable, as the present volume illustrates. This edited collection offers multiple fresh perspectives from an international cast of some 14 authors, informed by a broad spectrum of scholarly insights and research expertise, and drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources, which include photographs, maps and technical drawings, as well as more conventional ones. The essays here are hugely diverse in scope and timeframe, ranging from a single country over a short period, as for example in Roy Edwards’ ‘Shaping British Freight Transport in the Interwar Period: Failure of Foresight or Administration, 1919–34?’, to the more discursive, long view reflected in Ralf Roth, ‘Rails and Roads Between Competition and Dependency: a Long and Winding Relationship with Many Innovations That Failed’. However, the editors must be commended for avoiding the scourge of poor edited collections, that is, the mishmash of loosely related essays or essays that are uneven in their quality. All the essays here are of high quality and all address the central issues of this emergent field. This is a coherent intellectual project, with an introduction that frames the issues so that the connections between the chapters, if any, are evident, though not contrived.
As a new way of looking at a new subject, it is scarcely surprising that the emphasis is mainly, though not entirely, upon country studies – albeit within the theme of inter-modal competition – rather than on the development of an over-arching conceptual framework. This is not to underplay the value to scholars and students alike of essays that reveal many insights into the strategies pursued by the threatened mode, whether for example through price or service competition or through the development of inter-modal operations such as the railways incursion into road transport and containers. The volume also demonstrates the importance of interdependence – railways didn't disappear in the twentieth century any more than roads did in the nineteenth – and also the limits of technological determinism. Bruce Seely's observation in his ‘Inventing the American Road: Innovations Shaping the American Freeway’ is a salutary reminder. As he says ‘Technological capabilities count for very little if the other elements – be they organisational, financial, legal and political or social – are not in place’ (p. 264).
What is missing perhaps is a concluding chapter that offers an interchange between the authors about a prospectus for future work in this developing area. No doubt that will come through future international meetings of the kind that spawned the idea for this collection in 2009. Overall though the volume will be of considerable value for readers, whether they are new to the inter-modal theme or not, and should inspire scholars from various disciplines, not only transport historians, to get involved.