The Tentacles of Progress

Download or read book The Tentacles of Progress written by Daniel R. Headrick and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This penetrating examination of a paradox of colonial rule shows how the massive transfers of technology--including equipment, techniques, and experts--from the European imperial powers to their colonies in Asia and Africa resulted not in industrialization but in underdevelopment. Examining the most important technologies--shipping and railways, telegraphs and wireless, urban water supply and sewage disposal, economic botany and plantation agriculture, irrigation, and mining and metallurgy--Headrick provides a new perspective on colonial economic history and reopens the debate on the roots of Asian and African underdevelopment.