"In late nineteenth-century Mexico the Mexican populace was fascinated with the country's booming railroad network. Newspapers and periodicals were filled with art, poetry, literature, and social commentaries exploring the symbolic power of the railroad. As a symbol of economic, political, and industrial modernization, the locomotive served to demarcate a nation's status in the world. However, the dangers of locomotive travel, complicated by the fact that Mexico's railroads were foreign owned and operated, meant that the railroad could also symbolize disorder, death, and foreign domination. In The Civilizing Machine, Michael Matthews explores the ideological and cultural milieu that shaped the Mexican people's understanding of technology. Intrinsically tied to the Porfiriato, the thirty-five-year dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz, the booming railroad network represented material progress in a country seeking its place in the modern world. Matthews discloses how the railroad's development represented the crowning achievement of the regime and the material incarnation of its mantra, "order and progress." The Porfirian administration evoked the railroad in legitimizing and justifying its own reign, while political opponents employed the same rhetorical themes embodied by the railroads to challenge the manner in which that regime achieved economic development and modernization. As Matthews illustrates, the multiple symbols of the locomotive reflected deepening social divisions and foreshadowed the conflicts that eventually brought about the Mexican Revolution."--


    Zugriff

    Zugriff über TIB

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen

    Bestellung bei Subito €


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    The civilizing machine : a cultural history of Mexican railroads, 1876-1910


    Beteiligte:


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2013


    Format / Umfang :

    XIII, 321 S.


    Anmerkungen:

    23 cm
    Ill.
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 294 - 309) and index



    Medientyp :

    Buch


    Format :

    Print


    Sprache :

    Englisch



    Klassifikation :

    BKL:    15.07 Kulturgeschichte / 55.31 Schienenfahrzeuge / 15.88 Mittelamerika, Südamerika
    DDC:    385.0972/09034



    Electrification of Mexican railroads

    Engineering Index Backfile | 1929


    Mexican Railroads International Update

    Neri, P. / American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000


    Mexican railroads and railroad traffic

    Barker, Samuel H. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1906


    Mexican railroads for mine development

    Walsh, George E. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1905


    Making a system of Mexican railroads

    Conley, Edward M. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1906