Читать книгу Lighthouses - Peter Williams - Страница 12

To place this account into its historical context we must also look at the influences that created the conditions first for James Chance to reach this prominent position and then for lighthouses to take their place, alongside the telegraph, the railway and the steamship, as one of the ‘tools of empire’, which Britain mastered faster and better than any other country until the start of the First World War. Among these influences are the religious, scientific and educational conditions predominating in Britain and France in the early 19th century; the interrelationships between science, business and government; the part played by the wave of social and economic reform (and revolution) that swept through Europe as it left behind a time of conflict and entered a 100-year period of relative peace; and lastly the forces of family, individual ambition and talent that propelled Europe from the scientific into the industrial age.

The backdrop to our story is the incredible expansion of British and European influence across the globe in the ‘long 19th century’, which runs from the introduction of steam powered manufacturing in the 1780s to the outbreak of the First World War. By 1914, Britain controlled more than one third of the world’s population, and its navy and merchant fleet could be found in every major port on six continents. Africa had been colonized by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and Belgium; most of south Asia, the Far East and Australasia was under European control, as was South and Central America. North America had been colonized, and though the United States had gained independence from Britain in 1776, it was still a colonizing power with European roots. The two great Eastern civilizations, Japan and China, could not stand aloof from the European orbit and were forced to adopt its technology to avoid being rendered commercially, diplomatically and militarily irrelevant.

Historians have written about the central role railways, steamships, the telegraph and even quinine played as Europe established domination over societies that had not industrialized. There are passing references to lighthouses as another tool of empire in the standard historical texts, but none of them give due recognition to their significance in opening up new territories and making them safe for the colonizing powers. Without the proliferation of lighthouses into every port and major navigable water, losses at sea would have continued to mount and the navigation of faster, heavier and bigger steamships would have been an extremely hazardous business. The erection of a lighthouse accompanied the construction of new harbours, and it was invariably pressure from local interests that led to their construction. The governors and city fathers of Sydney, Singapore, Cape Town, Boston, Shanghai and Karachi all had one thing in common: they understood that without a safe port, illuminated by a network of lighthouses both in the harbour and the approaches to it, their cities would be a far less attractive destination for merchants and traders than those that possessed them. Because they invariably did not possess the means to build a modern lighthouse themselves, they had no choice but to order it from the colonial power. Lighthouses were under the control of the Admiralty, the Boards of Trade or their equivalents in Britain and most other countries, and these notoriously conservative institutions were under constant pressure to accede to the demands of impatient proconsuls in faraway places to supply them with these essential tools.