Award Date

5-15-2026

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Committee Member

Jeff Schauer

Second Committee Member

Michelle Tusan

Third Committee Member

Austin Dean

Fourth Committee Member

Christopher Willoughby

Number of Pages

118

Abstract

The construction of roads, canals, and supporting infrastructure in British India connected urban environs of power to interior peripheral spaces. The conclusion of the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849 saw the East India Company stand alone as the paramount power over the Indian subcontinent. A century of conquest gave way to a century of internal management. This shifted the state’s ‘gaze’ inward. Public infrastructure construction skyrocketed after 1849, transforming the role of the colonial state as it built roads, canals, bridges, courthouses, police stations, and jails on an unprecedented scale. This thesis will explore how these physical constructs bolstered connectivity, linking the state’s urban power centers of Calcutta and Delhi to the newly conquered territory of Punjab, altering the relationship between the state and its subjects. By connecting rural spaces into the state’s communication and transportation network, in 1849 the East India Company’s vigorous pursuit of public works projects transformed the ways colonial knowledge was generated. This thesis studies the projects that initiated the process of state centralization and modernization that the railroad and telegraph completed during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Keywords

Administrative and Bureaucratic History; British Empire; British India; Imperialism; Nineteenth-Century; State Infrastructure Projects

Disciplines

Asian Studies | European History | Transportation

File Format

PDF

File Size

1060 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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