Steamboats on the Indus The Limits of Western Technological Superiority in South Asia

Two forms of water-transport competed for supremacy on the Indus and its tributaries in the middle of the nineteenth century: the local country boats and the steamboats imported by the British. The steamers were the most advanced technology in South Asia. British investors poured capital into them, colonial officials subsidised them, and European travellers patronized them. The country boats-blown by the winds, rowed by the oars, dragged by ropes-had hardly changed in a thousand years. Yet the country boats kept the river trade while the steam flotillas went bankrupt. They were far better adapted to the shallow, shifting rivers

Clive Dewey is Emeritus Reader at University of Leicester. He has also been Visiting Fellow/Professor at the University of Cambridge, University of Heidelberg, and Leiden University.