ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to celebrate Jack Simmons’s outstanding contributions to the development of both imperial and railway history.2 At the close of the nineteenth century, the railway’s strategic importance was being more widely appreciated in terms of its economic and imperial dimensions. As the industrial powers increasingly jostled one another on the world’s markets, equations were being broadly drawn up amongst diplomats to discern the interrelations between the wider political influence of individual states and their respective foreign dealings and holdings, including railway shares. It was also being recognized that such interactions could have the greatest importance where local power structures were waning, as in the empires of China, Persia, and Turkey. Furthermore, this increasing identification of the business foundations to political sway overseas spilled out of chancelleries into drawing rooms and public houses.
