How would the world look-economically, politically, militarily, demographically; however you want to look at it-had railroads as we know them (anything beyond the primitive coal mine plate ways) never been developed? The POD is that there is no POD, just plain no one ever thinks of it. Assume that steam power is still applied to water transport and stationary power as OTL and that auto & air transport will come along at roughly their original pace (please explain the reasons if not?).
The World Without Railroads
- Thread starter Kevin C. Smith
- Start date
Not sure how you mean to see railways never developed, with George Stephenson out of the picture you would still have a crude railway by 1825. Delaying them by a decade might be plausible but beyond that it becomes more difficult as multiple people began having the same idea independently. Maybe reverse it and have them introduced 15-20 years earlier?
Well, it might be more of a regional difference: immediately before railroads, there were efficient canals, which could become even more powerful substituting steam engines for mules. However, it would not be possible to build them in all parts of the world, forcing the manual transport in convoys pulled by horsepower and then combustion at a much slower rate.
Maybe air power is developed somewhat earlier.
yeah, because US is the most important thing in the world, bar none ... gee, how could anyone think otherwise
That said, if having a PoD back when Railroads was created (or more exactly, it being that they weren't created) I very highly doubt that US would be able to expand much beyond Mississippi, simply because they would lack the infrastuctural and logistical ability to project power further west/southwest.
Well, that was uncalled for...
I think he used the example because the US was one of several large nations who immediately and permanently benefitted to an enormous degree by the completion of a railroad, thus making the absense of such a railroad a pretty vacuous hole in OTL's world history. It's actually a good example.
And, whether you like it or not, for a large part of world history in the past hundred or so years: Yes. The United States is among the most important things in the world, for better or worse.
David S Poepoe
Banned
No. American settlers headed west long before the railroads were even extended west beyond the Mississippi. The conquest of the Great Plains would be by horse and teams of horses. It would be slower and yet it would happen.
Unless the steam engine is entirely not developed I would consider the likelihood of a world with steamships yet lacking railways to any degree to be unrealistic.
David S Poepoe
Banned
It happened IOTL. The West Coast was settled before the Central Plains. Communications were done by pony express and then telegraph. The railway tied together the country economically.
I guess what i'm trying to say is that when the west coast is strong enough economically (and politically), with barely any direct influence from the east due to a lack of strong infrastucture (beyond telegraphs and horseback) going between the coasts (and more importantly, no sight of such in the future given no railroads), then i could see the west coast feeling more and more neglected (even if prehaps they actually aren't), which could in turn start a process of minor balkanization with the west coast seceding. If the infrastucture is weak enough prehaps even to the point where the West see it as "War of Independence, version 2.0".
With lack of infrastucture theres a limit on how expansive a unified nation can be with strong seperate centers. Question is then how big this can be? (Roman Empire managed it due to the mediterranian and a strong road infrastucture, Russia didn't have strong centers in far eastern Sibiria to act as a focal point)
With lack of infrastucture theres a limit on how expansive a unified nation can be with strong seperate centers. Question is then how big this can be? (Roman Empire managed it due to the mediterranian and a strong road infrastucture, Russia didn't have strong centers in far eastern Sibiria to act as a focal point)
David S Poepoe
Banned
No. Once the settlement of the Midwest begins the ties will be growing stronger. Also I don't really see anything like the railway remaining unknown much past the 1840s. The proliferation of steam power makes it certain that something will eventually emerge similar in capabilities.
I know that assuming that steam power, even if applied to navigation and (later) road locomotion as OTL-ish is swatting at butterflies but I don't think it is ASB. As has been pointed out, canals had been developed for some years as bulk overland transport.
Britain/Northern Europe (except Scandinavia): I expect would develop along similar lines as OTL since they would still have similar year 'round access to area markets. Britain, with its well developed canal system would probably be the least affected since there would be minimal overland transport before reaching any navigable waterway. Europe is going to be limited by what can be built connecting with the already major rivers. Scandinavia and Russia are going to be limited by winter freeze shutting down both inland and sea ports.
Australia, South America and Africa: Mostly colonized along ocean ports and major rivers to begin with. Not much change?
North America: The Appalachian Mountains are going to be the main barrier to movement from the Atlantic seaboard but the St. Lawrence (and later Erie Canal)/Great Lakes/Mississippi (and tributaries) system does an end run around that to pretty much everywhere except the south, which was accessible by sea and other river systems. In the US, many canal systems were proposed and built but rapidly succumbed to the development or railroads. West of the Mississippi, the topography is amenable to canal construction but aridity isn't. Canada had the building blocks for a waterway system that would reach further west than the US. Winter closures, though, will affect probably everything north of Saint Louis. There simply is no way through the Rockies.
Britain/Northern Europe (except Scandinavia): I expect would develop along similar lines as OTL since they would still have similar year 'round access to area markets. Britain, with its well developed canal system would probably be the least affected since there would be minimal overland transport before reaching any navigable waterway. Europe is going to be limited by what can be built connecting with the already major rivers. Scandinavia and Russia are going to be limited by winter freeze shutting down both inland and sea ports.
Australia, South America and Africa: Mostly colonized along ocean ports and major rivers to begin with. Not much change?
North America: The Appalachian Mountains are going to be the main barrier to movement from the Atlantic seaboard but the St. Lawrence (and later Erie Canal)/Great Lakes/Mississippi (and tributaries) system does an end run around that to pretty much everywhere except the south, which was accessible by sea and other river systems. In the US, many canal systems were proposed and built but rapidly succumbed to the development or railroads. West of the Mississippi, the topography is amenable to canal construction but aridity isn't. Canada had the building blocks for a waterway system that would reach further west than the US. Winter closures, though, will affect probably everything north of Saint Louis. There simply is no way through the Rockies.
Just for pointing out, not all of scandinavia would be that limited ... Denmark and Scania tend to have much warmer winters than their latitude would suggest (and certainly warmer than continental Germany to the south), due to water around them, and while ice winters happen, its not often (and rarely for long periods).
The US had already projected power all the way to the Pacific before the railroads even passed the Appalachians.
iddt3
Donor
I think this is actually ASB. You can retard the development of rails, yes. You can make other modes of transportation more prominant. But so long as you have steam engines and mining carts (The earliest use of tracks and carts goes back to the sixth century BC for crissakes.) someones is going to combine the two. The limit on early development of railroads wasn't a matter of people not figuring out how to combine steam power and rail, but the limits of steam engines. From pretty much the moment Steam Engines grew powerful enough, people started using them to pull things, and rails make this much easier.
In addition, rails fill a niche that nothing else really does well, i.e. moving large quantities of goods overland cheaply and efficiently in the absence of viable water transport, and as long as this need is there there will be entrepreneurs trying to apply steam power to it. Even today rail is far more efficient at moving freight overland than anything else.
The only way to prevent railroads once you have sufficiently efficient steam engines IMO is religious or cultural prohibitions, and to get those you'll have to generate some really twisted butterflies.
In addition, rails fill a niche that nothing else really does well, i.e. moving large quantities of goods overland cheaply and efficiently in the absence of viable water transport, and as long as this need is there there will be entrepreneurs trying to apply steam power to it. Even today rail is far more efficient at moving freight overland than anything else.
The only way to prevent railroads once you have sufficiently efficient steam engines IMO is religious or cultural prohibitions, and to get those you'll have to generate some really twisted butterflies.
I don't know if there are any studies of what it would mean to the *world* economy, but with respect to the US, Robert Fogel wrote a famous article which I once cited in soc.history.what-if https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/TxHuWjWI1mA/ptGDJGhW52gJ as a legitimate thought experiment, despite its lack of a plausible POD:
***
"Thought experiments" where there is no plausible POD have a legitimate
place. They are particularly common in economic history. For example,
Robert Fogel famously argued in *Railroads and American Economic Growth*
(1964) that building no railroads at all would have had only a slight
effect on the US gross domestic product before 1890. See
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/04442e974be80a36
for some of his arguments.
Now there is no plausible POD for there being no railroads built in
nineteenth century America. (Horrendous accidents on the early railroads
bring a ban on construction? Hardly likely, since there *were* plenty of
horrendous accidents on the early railroads, and people accepted them as
the price of Progress. Canal interests bribe legislators to ban
railroads? There were just too many legislators in too many states to
bribe, and anyway there would be public outrage at banning a technological
advance that other advanced nations were embracing.) Yet Fogel's inquiry
seems to me both perfectly legitimate and significant--since statements
like "Railroads contributed enormously to American economic growth in the
nineteenth century" had been commonplace, and one cannot properly evaluate
such statements without considering how the American economy would have
grown without railroads. (Whether Fogel reached a correct conclusion is
of course another matter.)
***
"Thought experiments" where there is no plausible POD have a legitimate
place. They are particularly common in economic history. For example,
Robert Fogel famously argued in *Railroads and American Economic Growth*
(1964) that building no railroads at all would have had only a slight
effect on the US gross domestic product before 1890. See
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/04442e974be80a36
for some of his arguments.
Now there is no plausible POD for there being no railroads built in
nineteenth century America. (Horrendous accidents on the early railroads
bring a ban on construction? Hardly likely, since there *were* plenty of
horrendous accidents on the early railroads, and people accepted them as
the price of Progress. Canal interests bribe legislators to ban
railroads? There were just too many legislators in too many states to
bribe, and anyway there would be public outrage at banning a technological
advance that other advanced nations were embracing.) Yet Fogel's inquiry
seems to me both perfectly legitimate and significant--since statements
like "Railroads contributed enormously to American economic growth in the
nineteenth century" had been commonplace, and one cannot properly evaluate
such statements without considering how the American economy would have
grown without railroads. (Whether Fogel reached a correct conclusion is
of course another matter.)
Without railroads, the Civil War in the United States becomes mutated beyond recognition (*) Neither side will be able to maintain large armies in the field for any ,length of time, much less shift forces from theater to theater at will, or project power deep into enemy territory (okay, the Confederacy could never do that anyhow). I predict that the war will become a bloody stalemate, with a much higher probability of Confederate victory after the Union will to persevere is worn away.
(*) Go, ahead, try to reinforce Washington in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Fort Sumter. Won't happen as quicky as it did in the OTL without rail power. And then, assuming we even have a battle of Manassas in this TL, Joe Johnston won't be reinforcing Beauregard via railways from the Valley. See what I mean?
(*) Go, ahead, try to reinforce Washington in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Fort Sumter. Won't happen as quicky as it did in the OTL without rail power. And then, assuming we even have a battle of Manassas in this TL, Joe Johnston won't be reinforcing Beauregard via railways from the Valley. See what I mean?