11-24-2004, 10:19 PM
A book review: Across time and geography
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Across time and geography
LANDSCAPES OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER â Swedish Ironmakers in India 1860-1864: Jan af Geijerstam; Pub. by Jernkontorets Bergshistoriska, Skirftserie-42. Distributed by Jernkontoret/The Swedish Steel Producers' Association, Box 1721, Se-111, 87 Stockholm, Sweden. Price not mentioned.
THE STORY that this brilliantly written book tries to tell is fairly simple. Three Swedes come to India in the early 1860s to set up charcoal based ironworks at two locations â Dechauri in the Kumaon hills and Burwai in the Narmada valley in Madhya Pradesh.
After a lot of hardship and after solving a variety of technical, social, logistic and other problems, Julius Ramsay and Gustaf Wittenstrom set up a large state-of-the-art charcoal based plant at Dechauri while Mitander started a much smaller plant at Burwai. The Burwai plant, in spite of an excellent design, encountered problems during its first production run. It closed down and never operated again.
The Kumaon plant after its erection operated in fits and starts at various times during 1860-80 before it was finally shut down.
<b>The book tries to answer certain basic questions related to these two case histories. Why were the plants set up and abandoned without really giving them a fair trial? Can these two case histories be used to understand why it took India such a long time to establish a viable steel industry? How did the two abandoned projects affect the subsequent development of the two locations?</b>
Though the questions themselves are fairly simple the way in which these have to be researched and answered is complex. Understanding connections between technology and society is neither simple nor obvious. The unique feature of the book is that the author manages to unravel this complicated chain of cause and effect rather well.
Technology and society
Through use of archived material, field visits, interviews with local people, plans, photographs and drawings from various sources, the author reconstructs the physical and social setting of these two projects.
Starting from the macro context of the Empire and the history of iron making, the book moves effortlessly into the micro detail of the setting up of the plants and their operations. The origin of the projects, the choice of technology and the social networks within which they arose and were implemented are described vividly.
The parts played by key actors at various stages of the project, especially the Swedes, are particularly well captured. Tables of inputs and outputs that benchmark the Indian plants against their global counterparts, for example, provide a detailed insight into the technical capabilities of the two plants.
Such snippets placed at appropriate positions in the book connect the micro and the macro in an easy to understand way.
Contextualisation
The final chapters relate the two cases to the larger social, economic and political context of the British colonisation of India.
<b>The conflicts between local development of resources arising from the resident British and the local Indian interests, and the imperatives of the British manufacturing and trading class to capture and monopolise the Indian market that finally leads to the abandonment of the two projects are well-researched and well-presented. </b>
One of the elements of the Burwai plant set up by Mitander was a scaled down Bessemer converter. If the projects had become operational India would have been reasonably close to the state-of-the-art in steel making.
<b>By abandoning the two plants India missed a window of opportunity for internalising the technology transfer and producing iron and steel products that could compete globally. This delayed the emergence of the Indian steel industry considerably. This comes through very logically and convincingly. </b>
Lots of references, footnotes and explanations including details of traditional Indian iron making technologies embellish the book and reinforce the key points the author wishes to make.
The book can and should be read by all. It will be of particular interest to people interested in the history of technology and the relationship between technology and society.
S. CHANDRASHEKAR
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Across time and geography
LANDSCAPES OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER â Swedish Ironmakers in India 1860-1864: Jan af Geijerstam; Pub. by Jernkontorets Bergshistoriska, Skirftserie-42. Distributed by Jernkontoret/The Swedish Steel Producers' Association, Box 1721, Se-111, 87 Stockholm, Sweden. Price not mentioned.
THE STORY that this brilliantly written book tries to tell is fairly simple. Three Swedes come to India in the early 1860s to set up charcoal based ironworks at two locations â Dechauri in the Kumaon hills and Burwai in the Narmada valley in Madhya Pradesh.
After a lot of hardship and after solving a variety of technical, social, logistic and other problems, Julius Ramsay and Gustaf Wittenstrom set up a large state-of-the-art charcoal based plant at Dechauri while Mitander started a much smaller plant at Burwai. The Burwai plant, in spite of an excellent design, encountered problems during its first production run. It closed down and never operated again.
The Kumaon plant after its erection operated in fits and starts at various times during 1860-80 before it was finally shut down.
<b>The book tries to answer certain basic questions related to these two case histories. Why were the plants set up and abandoned without really giving them a fair trial? Can these two case histories be used to understand why it took India such a long time to establish a viable steel industry? How did the two abandoned projects affect the subsequent development of the two locations?</b>
Though the questions themselves are fairly simple the way in which these have to be researched and answered is complex. Understanding connections between technology and society is neither simple nor obvious. The unique feature of the book is that the author manages to unravel this complicated chain of cause and effect rather well.
Technology and society
Through use of archived material, field visits, interviews with local people, plans, photographs and drawings from various sources, the author reconstructs the physical and social setting of these two projects.
Starting from the macro context of the Empire and the history of iron making, the book moves effortlessly into the micro detail of the setting up of the plants and their operations. The origin of the projects, the choice of technology and the social networks within which they arose and were implemented are described vividly.
The parts played by key actors at various stages of the project, especially the Swedes, are particularly well captured. Tables of inputs and outputs that benchmark the Indian plants against their global counterparts, for example, provide a detailed insight into the technical capabilities of the two plants.
Such snippets placed at appropriate positions in the book connect the micro and the macro in an easy to understand way.
Contextualisation
The final chapters relate the two cases to the larger social, economic and political context of the British colonisation of India.
<b>The conflicts between local development of resources arising from the resident British and the local Indian interests, and the imperatives of the British manufacturing and trading class to capture and monopolise the Indian market that finally leads to the abandonment of the two projects are well-researched and well-presented. </b>
One of the elements of the Burwai plant set up by Mitander was a scaled down Bessemer converter. If the projects had become operational India would have been reasonably close to the state-of-the-art in steel making.
<b>By abandoning the two plants India missed a window of opportunity for internalising the technology transfer and producing iron and steel products that could compete globally. This delayed the emergence of the Indian steel industry considerably. This comes through very logically and convincingly. </b>
Lots of references, footnotes and explanations including details of traditional Indian iron making technologies embellish the book and reinforce the key points the author wishes to make.
The book can and should be read by all. It will be of particular interest to people interested in the history of technology and the relationship between technology and society.
S. CHANDRASHEKAR
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->