1st Edition
Transport and Its Place in History Making the Connections
Transport and mobility history is one of the most exciting areas of historical research at the present. As its scope expands, it entices scholars working in fields as diverse as historical geography, management studies, sociology, industrial archaeology, cultural and literary studies, ethnography, and anthropology, as well as those working in various strands of historical research. Containing contributions exploring transport and mobility history after 1800, this volume of eclectic chapters shows how new subjects are explored, new sources are being encountered, considered and used, and how increasingly diverse and innovative methodological lenses are applied to both new and well-travelled subjects. From canals to Concorde, from freight to passengers, from screen to literature, the contents of this book will therefore not only demonstrate the cutting edge of research, and deliver valuable new insights into the role and position of transport and mobility in history, but it will also evidence the many and varied directions and possibilities that exist for the field’s future development.
“Making the Connections” – Introduction
David Turner
Part I: Policy and Practice
1. ‘Supersonic/gin & tonic: The rise and fall of Concorde, 1950-2000’.
Peter Lyth
2. Observing 'Saint Monday': variations in the potential for leisure mobility for workers in the north of England in the mid-19th century
Susan Major
3. The vulnerability paradox: the illusion of permanence in the UK public transport industry
Kevin Tennent
4. Barrels rolling free: modal shift in the British brewing industry, 1897-1914
David Turner
Part II: Cultures of Transport
5. Maintaining the Connections: A Social and Cultural History of the Permanent Way
Oliver Betts
6. “Being poor is going to the Ritz on the bus”: The portrayal of buses and trams in popular culture
Martin Higginson
7. Canals in Nineteenth-century Literary History
Jodie Matthews
Part III: Methodologies
8. “The Trajectories of Railway Kinship Families in Victorian York”
Philip Batman
9. Sensory ethnography and film interpretation: sociological readings of historical archives
Peter Cox
10. Identification of the urban infrastructure of nineteenth-century horse transport: a case study of Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK
Megan Doole
11. Digital disasters: Crowdsourcing the railway accident
Mike Esbester
Biography
David Turner is Associate Lecturer in Railway Studies at the University of York, and teaches at the Centre for Lifelong Learning and The York Management School’s Masters in Railway Studies. He completed his PhD with the Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History, York, in 2013 and was awarded in 2016 the Business Archives Council’s Bursary for Business History Research. He is also a book review editor for the Journal of Transport History and a co-convener of the Institute of Historical Research’s Transport and Mobility History Seminar.
