ABSTRACT
Scholars often invoke the pithy, paradoxical formulations of Indian-born Briton Rudyard Kipling – “the White Man’s Burden,” “the savage wars of peace” – to give voice to the tensions and contradictions of the global Fin De Siècle. Lesser known but equally significant in its encapsulation of the era is a succinct statement buried in a piece of Kipling’s science fiction first published in 1905. The railroad and the steamship proved problematic to social elites because they were at once “passenger-oriented” transportation technologies, attuned to the embryonic, vulgar mass culture of the nineteenth century, and commodity-based forms of transport, in which the efficient transport of people and goods took precedence over the aesthetic experience of travel itself. Transports of speed evoked passionate responses from both supporters and critics, amplifying the ambivalence and dynamism of this schizophrenic epoch. The airplane similarly benefitted from preceding advances in transport technology.
