THE RAILWAY JOURNEY SCHIVELBUSCH MOVIE
THE RAILWAY JOURNEY SCHIVELBUSCH SERIES

And then they expanded space by creating suburbs and new towns. I mean sometimes nature was literally annihilated as when tunnels were cut through hills and depressions were graded to make the railroad as straight as possible, “as if drawn with a ruler.' But railroads also shaped space and time in a manner totally unprecedented in human history by, for instance, speeding up travel times which shrunk the world. This wasn’t just a fancy way of talkingĪbout how railways sped up travel, but also the way that the railroad destroyed traditional relationships with nature. For instance the phrase, “annihilation of time and space” was a pretty popular one when talking about railways. And the change was definitely seen as radical. And since railways changed the lives of middle and upper class people, who tend to write a lot, we know a lot about them. That encompassed everything that industrialization was about. It wasn’t just locomotion though, the railway itself changed the idea of an industrial machine to include its surrounding infrastructure, right? You needed rails and these huge engines. That you were in a different world from that of your parents or grandparents. But the presence of railroads reminded you But if you were, say, a mortgage broker your work life hadn’t changed - it’s not like you had a computer.

Stuff was around you all day everyday slowly killing your soul. You know, if you were a factory worker that Also, since not everyone worked in factories, railways were one of the few places that both middle and upper class people came face to face with industrial machinery. That people hadn’t seen before, which makes them a pretty good metaphor for industrialization. So railroads were these big, loud machines And it’s vitally important that we thinkĪbout the role technology plays in our lives including the technology of railroads. But it contains a ton of interesting ideas, and it’s one of those books that makes you think differently about the world.

THE RAILWAY JOURNEY SCHIVELBUSCH SERIES

So to be clear, I’m not saying I agree withĮverything in this book - it’s one interpretation of a series of events. We want to try to introduce you to how exciting history can be and also how unsettled it is. But, uh, we are going to talk about like a specific and essential slice of the Industrial Revolution, that also like pleases my four year old self a lot: Railroads! Choooga chooga choooga chooga choo choo! We’re going to be talking about a small book by Wolfgang Schivelbusch called 'The Railway Journey.' So in this Crash Course World History series we’re talking a lot about a lot of different history books so that we can approach subjects from a variety of angles.

THE RAILWAY JOURNEY SCHIVELBUSCH MOVIE

I’ve got this movie that’s about to film. Green, are you going to doĪ whole series on the Industrial Revolution? Because that actually sounds really boring.

Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course World History and today we’re returning to a subject that, could have an entire Crash Course series all of its own: the Industrial Revolution.

The railway journey schivelbusch