Gijs

Gijs Mom, Gordon Pirie, Laurent Tissot ( eds.)

histoIRE des transports, du tourisme et du voyage

Mom

For decades scholars in diverse fields have examined problems in Gordon

Pirie
the history of mobility. Their diversity was their strength but also
their limitation, as disciplinary boundaries impeded the exchange Laurent
Tissot
MOBILITY IN HISTORY
of ideas that lets scholarship flourish. Since 2003 the International
Association for the History of Traffic, Transport and Mobility (T2M) ( eds.) The State of the Art in the History of Transport,
has served as a free-trade zone, fostering a new interdisciplinary Traffic and Mobility
vitality in a now-flourishing field.
Now, with the publication of its first yearbook, T2M has surveyed
these gains in the form of a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of
research in the field. Here, twenty-seven scholars in the history of
mobility, from sixteen countries and five continents, present synopses
of recent research.
Besides reviews of research in thirteen countries, contributions also
include thematic reviews relating mobility to the environment, auto-
mobile fetishism, race, gender, and other transnational themes. All in

The State of the Art in the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility
all, more than sixty scholars within and beyond T2M cooperated in
this project, making it a truly collective work.

Gijs Mom is Programme Director for Mobility History at Eindhoven

University of Technology. In November 2003 he co-founded the
International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and
Mobility (T2M), of which he was nominated President (until September
2008). His most recent publications include (with Laurent Tissot) Road

MOBILITY IN HISTORY
History: Planning, Building and Use (Neuchâtel, Alphil, 2007).
Gordon Pirie teaches and researches transport and travel. He has
published widely on aspects of past and present railway and air
transport in southern Africa. He has begun researching the history
of municipal airports in South Africa. His research into roads and
automobility in colonial Africa is ongoing.
Laurent Tissot is professor of contemporary history at the University
of Neuchâtel. He is currently dean of the Faculty of Humanities and
Human Sciences. His main fields of research are: business history,
tourism and transport history. His last publications: 'Le tourisme.'
Special issue of Entreprises et histoire (Paris, 2007).

49 CHF – 33 € – 54 $

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 Public transport: at the crossroads of
urban history and the history of mobility

Arnaud Passalacqua
University of Rheims Champagne-Ardenne

The first historical works on public transport were published when those
services started in the 1820s-1830s, just as the first historical works on cars
appeared during the Belle Époque.1 Public transport arose during the nineteenth
century with industrialization and urbanization.2 European and North American
cases have received the most scholarly attention.
The modern academic history of public transport was born in the 1960s,
particularly, in the American historiography, with Sam Bass Warner’s book on
the shaping of Boston by streetcars during the end of the nineteenth century.3
In Europe, the impressive history of London public transport by Theo Barker
and Michael Robbins set an example of business and economic analysis.4
Streetcars have attracted more attention than the relatively scarce subways,
and except in London, where it enjoys a peculiar status, buses have inspired

1   For the Parisian case, note the book published just after the opening of the first omnibus network,
in 1828, which dealt with a more or less similar and previous attempt, led by the philosopher Blaise
Pascal in 1662 (Louis Jean Nicolas Monmerqué, Les carrosses à cinq sols, ou les omnibus du
dix-septième siècle (Paris, 1828)).
2   Still for the Parisian case, see Nicholas Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris:
The Idea of Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge and London, 1996).
3   Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston (1870-1900) (Cambridge,
1962).
4   Theo Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport (London, 1963-1974).

243
 Arnaud Passalacqua

little scholarship. Streetcars have also benefited from the interest of the well-
established community of railway historians.
Few historians have attempted a transnational perspective. An early example
is the American scholar John P. McKay, who in 1976 examined streetcars in
Europe. McKay explained how an American-born technology was variously
adopted in Western Europe.5 He sheds light on the social construction of street
railways within and between countries, but deals little with travelers. His study
is still influential. For instance, a recent issue of Ricerche storiche, edited by
Andrea Giuntini and Gregorio Núñez, tried to formulate the common conception
of public transport for Southern Europe.6
In his study of transport policy in Chicago from 1900 to 1930, Paul Barrett
examined streetcars, subways and elevated railroads.7 Barrett drew a picture
of social groups which competed to shape streets, emphasizing politics. In this
vein, Zachary M. Schrag’s history of the substitution of buses for streetcars in
New York during the interwar period (2000) is a convincing case.8 Schrag
reveals the political uses of technical objects, examining the modal tensions
between the bus, the subway and the streetcar.
This American literature identifies three main social groups that were essential
in the shaping and use of public transport: engineers, politicians and travelers.
But if the technical history of public transport is well known, the policy of
urban transport still needs more investigation. For instance a recent book on
the Parisian case impressively illustrated that point of view, but still considered
public transport riders as a secondary point in the historical analysis.9
Users have also received insufficient attention, perhaps because of their
inconspicuous archival record. The intellectual framework of historians also
leads them to be more interested in technical and political history and to forget
travelers. However, scholars have just begun to bring together an analysis of
technology, policy and use. For instance, in his recent book on the subway
in Washington, Zachary M. Schrag analyzes the political tensions before its
realization, describing the behavior of transit riders and even assessing the

5   John P. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Europe (Princeton,
1976).
6   Andrea Giuntini and Gregorio Núñez, ‘Reti di trasporti urbani nell’Europa Meridionale’,
Ricerche storiche, 37:2 (2007), 273-83.
7   Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Formation of Public Policy in Chicago
1900-1930 (Philadelphia, 1983).
8   Zachary M. Schrag, ‘‘The Bus is Young and Honest’: Transportation, Politics, Technical Choice,
and the Motorization of Manhattan Surface Transit, 1919-1936’, Technology and Culture 41 (2000),
51-79.
9   Dominique Larroque, Michel Margairaz and Pierre Zembri, Paris et ses transports, XIXe - XXe
siècles. Deux siècles de décisions pour la ville et sa région (Paris, 2002)
244
 Public transport

design of transit spaces.10 Schrag adopts an unusually comprehensive global

perspective.
Important illustrated books include one on Turin edited by Stefano Musso.11
Such books are written for a broad audience, but are relevant for academic work.
A compilation by Sheila Taylor on London and its transport networks is one
of the best, probably because London has one of the richest histories of public
transport.12 Labor scholarship on public transport has tended to follow Marxian
theses and has suffered from a loss of interest.13
Few works cross the history of urban public transport with the history of cars.
In the North American frame, Brian J. Cudahy tried to draw a picture of the
history of urban public transport at a national level, but generally the city deeply
structures the subfield.14
Historians of public transport should pay attention to public space, urban form
and social uses. Public transport history is the crossroads of urban historiography
and the history of mobility. Two recent books point the way. Suburbanizing the
Masses (2003), edited by Colin Divall and Winstan Bond, is a major study of
the impact of public transport on urban form.15 It addresses the construction of
transportation networks, and especially the role of planners, city managers and
politicians. Their history crosses social and spatial considerations, and links
public transport networks and urban shape.16 Urban growth, space, and streets
are all considered.
The interaction between public space and technology is at the heart of Urban
Machinery (2008), edited by Mikael Hård and Thomas J. Misa.17 While not
a study of public transport, its point of view is interesting for public transport
historians. It proposes an analysis of urban technological networks in Europe as
a factor that interacts with social and economic life. For instance, Hans Buiter

10   Zachary M. Schrag, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (Baltimore,
2006)
11   Stefano Musso, Il trasporto pubblico a Torino nel secolo dell’industria: ATM, SATTI, GTT
(Torino, 2007).
12   Sheila Taylor (ed.), The Moving Metropolis: A History of London’s Transport since 1800 (London,
2002).
13   One of the most important works on workers in public transport is Nicholas Papayanis’s book on
Parisian coachmen (Nicholas Papayanis, Coachmen of Nineteenth-Century Paris: Service Workers
and Class Consciousness (Baton Rouge and London, 1993)).
14   Brian J. Cudahy, Cash, Tokens and Transfers: a History of Urban Mass Transit in North America
(New York, 1990).
15   Colin Divall and Winstan Bond, Suburbanizing the Masses. Public Transport and Urban
Development in Historical Perspective (Aldershot, 2003).
16   See Jesús Mirás-Araujo’s recent article, ‘Spanish tramway as a vehicle of urban shaping: La
Coruña, 1903-1962’, Journal of Transport History 26, no 2 (2005): 20-37.
17  Mikael Hård and Thomas J. Misa, Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities (Cambridge,
2008).
245
 Arnaud Passalacqua

points out the importance of streetcars in the conception of Dutch streets.18

Public transport has been central to the Europeanization of European cities.
These books reveal the influence of technological ideas and fantasies on
politicians and engineers. A work on expertise, its constitution and diffusion,
is a good starting point for new research projects on technology, transport and
urban form.
The transnational dimension also needs further development. Among the
works in progress, Carlos Lopez Galvis’s PhD dissertation on the introduction
of the city railway in London and Paris is a good example of a transnational
history like Elfi Bendikat’s analysis of public transport in Belle Époque Berlin
and Paris (1999).19 A wider vision is provided by the Tensions of Europe group,
which gathers scholars working on the links between European society and
technology.
The historiography of public transport reveals new paths that have
progressively opened: the history of uses and users, transnational studies,
the shaping of public space, common studies with urban historians. This
configuration should open the way to the history of urban mobility by crossing
public transport, cars, walking and other means of mobility.

18   Hans Buiter, ‘Constructing Dutch streets: a melting pot of European technologies’, in ibid.:
141-162.
19  Elfi Bendikat, Offentliche Nahverkehrspolitik in Berlin und Paris 1890-1914. Structurbedingungen,
politische Konzeptionen und Realisierungsprobleme (Berlin, 1999).
246
 Contents

Preface. ..............................................................................................................7
Gijs Mom, Gordon Pirie and Laurent Tissot
I The State of the Art

Towards a paradigm shift ? A decade of transport and mobility history......13

Gijs Mom, Colin Divall and Peter Lyth
Mobility: trajectory of a concept in the social sciences. .............................41
Vincent Kaufmann
A natural intersection: a survey of historical work on mobility and
the environment...............................................................................................61

Tom McCarthy
The history and future of automotive fetishism. ...........................................83
David Gartman
II Continents and Countries

Urban mobility without wheels: a historiographical review of

pedestrianism..................................................................................................111

Peter Norton
A political turn: highways and mass transit in american mobility
history............................................................................................................117

Michael Fein
Mobility in Australia: unsettling the settled.............................................123
Georgine Clarsen
African mobility history: recent texts on past passages. ............................129
Gordon Pirie
Knitting a nation together: three themes in canadian mobility history.....137
Liz Millward
Transport in china before the industrial age: comparative research
issues...............................................................................................................141

Nanny Kim
From the Scythians to the Soviets: an evaluation of russian mobility
history............................................................................................................149

Tracy Nichols Busch

259
New developments in a neglected field: transport and mobility in
latin american recent historiography...........................................................159

Rodrigo Booth and Melina Piglia

Niche development or wider renaissance? Italian mobility history
growth in the last decade.............................................................................167

Massimo Moraglio
National and transnational transport history: trends in recent dutch
research. ........................................................................................................173

Hans Buiter
All is politics: fifty years of mobility history in Belgium. .........................179
Donald Weber
Swiss traffic history: a research report. .....................................................187
Hans-Ulrich Schiedt
Still focussing on the railway: transport and mobility history in
Austria...........................................................................................................193
Bernd Kreuzer
An indistinct constellation: mobility history in Greece. ............................201
Aristotle Tympas and Irene Anastasiadou
Bulgarian state of the art: more transport than mobility history. ...........213
Emiliya Karaboeva
III Topics

European mobility policy: a topic to be discovered. ....................................221

Christian Henrich-Franke
Mobilizing race, racializing mobility: writing race into mobility
studies.............................................................................................................229

Cotten Seiler
Gender and mobility: historicizing the terms...............................................235
Georgine Clarsen
Public transport: at the crossroads of urban history and the history
of mobility......................................................................................................243

Arnaud Passalacqua
Production versus mobility? new perspectives for an old dilemma. ...........247
Valentina Fava
Notes on contributors...................................................................................253

260
 Gijs
Gijs Mom, Gordon Pirie, Laurent Tissot ( eds.)

histoIRE des transports, du tourisme et du voyage

Mom

For decades scholars in diverse fields have examined problems in Gordon

Pirie
the history of mobility. Their diversity was their strength but also
their limitation, as disciplinary boundaries impeded the exchange Laurent
Tissot
MOBILITY IN HISTORY
of ideas that lets scholarship flourish. Since 2003 the International
Association for the History of Traffic, Transport and Mobility (T2M) ( eds.) The State of the Art in the History of Transport,
has served as a free-trade zone, fostering a new interdisciplinary Traffic and Mobility
vitality in a now-flourishing field.
Now, with the publication of its first yearbook, T2M has surveyed
these gains in the form of a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of
research in the field. Here, twenty-seven scholars in the history of
mobility, from sixteen countries and five continents, present synopses
of recent research.
Besides reviews of research in thirteen countries, contributions also
include thematic reviews relating mobility to the environment, auto-
mobile fetishism, race, gender, and other transnational themes. All in

The State of the Art in the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility
all, more than sixty scholars within and beyond T2M cooperated in
this project, making it a truly collective work.

Gijs Mom is Programme Director for Mobility History at Eindhoven

University of Technology. In November 2003 he co-founded the
International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and
Mobility (T2M), of which he was nominated President (until September
2008). His most recent publications include (with Laurent Tissot) Road

MOBILITY IN HISTORY
History: Planning, Building and Use (Neuchâtel, Alphil, 2007).
Gordon Pirie teaches and researches transport and travel. He has
published widely on aspects of past and present railway and air
transport in southern Africa. He has begun researching the history
of municipal airports in South Africa. His research into roads and
automobility in colonial Africa is ongoing.
Laurent Tissot is professor of contemporary history at the University
of Neuchâtel. He is currently dean of the Faculty of Humanities and
Human Sciences. His main fields of research are: business history,
tourism and transport history. His last publications: 'Le tourisme.'
Special issue of Entreprises et histoire (Paris, 2007).

49 CHF – 33 € – 54 $