Technology in a Colonized Territory A Case Study of Electricity in Madras Presidency 19th 20th Centuries

Abstract

The world of instant communication has been a part of everyday lives for more than a newlinecentury. The 195 countries of the world today possess at least some urban hubs which newlinewill allow at least a slice of population to be connected to the web of time-space newlinesimultaneity. However, there was a time when whole cultures were placed on a newlinedifferent technological plane, while the advanced Western countries commanded a newlinecommunication web with science and technological breakthroughs, which was newlineessential to their holding much of the territories around the world as colonies. This newlinethesis does not engage with the human, historical and sociological teleologies that newlinewere embodied in the formulation of physical laws and the growth of a new scientific newlineculture in the West. Nor does it look at the socio-political, cultural and economic newlineimpact within the Western nations that were spawning the technological innovations newlinethat grew out of the major discoveries made by the early modern and modern Western newlinescientists throughout the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. These individuals were newlineinstrumental in building a new esoteric world of interconnected knowledge web newlinewhich grew very fast, certainly, but which could be accessed by only the highly newlineeducated individuals, who formed communities and societies of their own. This thesis newlineisolates just a strand from this mighty knowledge-web which put in place a world that newlinewas strange and unfamiliar indeed, whose very foundational principles were beyond newlinethe congnisance of other cultures that had no intellectual training in their study and newlineconcentrates solely on the domain of the concepts and principles governing electrical newline