Contracting Innovation: Commerce, Technology, and Imperial Identity, 1815-1890

Type Thesis

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This dissertation analyzes the intersections between technological innovation, commercial expansion, and the practices of liberal governmentality in nineteenth-century Britain. After the Napoleonic Wars, the steamship began to replace sailing vessels for both commercial and military purposes, but governments faced the challenging prospect of deciding how to adopt this unproven and still developing technology. While Britain had emerged triumphant in 1815, twenty years of war caused severe financial strain, and the post-war period was one of austerity, even as new expenses, such as the development of a steam fleet, had to be financed. In order to achieve this, the state turned to private companies, paying them subsidies to carry the mail, and using the resulting influence over these firms to direct them to develop improved steamships, even as these firms influenced the goals and practices of the state in turn. For years this approach, following the patterns of “liberal governmentality” as defined by Patrick Joyce and other scholars, allowed Britain to develop both civilian and military ships to help them to cost-effectively control and consolidate their empire, as the principles of freed trade came to increasingly define it, and at least until the changing nature of technology once again required the state to reevaluate their methods.