[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.These workshops employed thousands of Indian workers who had an opportunity to learn the skills associated with building and maintaining locomotives and other railway equipment.11The British introduced the telegraph to India and, by 1900, had installed tens of thousands of miles of telegraph lines and hundreds of receiving stations throughout the region.The telegraph, of course, had considerable military value, helping the British army to collect up-to-date information and direct troops where they were needed.But, of course, the telegraph also became an important commercial instrument, allowing Indian as well as European businessmen to conduct transactions rapidly across the entire subcontinent.In addition to these systems of transport and communication, the British built factories, canals, and irrigation systems and brought many other elements of European technology to India.Of course, India already possessed a long tradition of scholarship in science and mathematics, and some existing technologies may have been extinguished under British rule.In general, however, Britain brought advanced technology to the subcontinent it conquered.Ironically, this created the technological base from which India eventually surpassed Britain as an industrial and scientific center.An important symbol of this shift came in 2008, when India's Tata Motors purchased Britain's venerable Jaguar and Land Rover motor companies and then spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bring these English vehicles up to Indian technological standards.REVERSE TECHNOLOGY FLOWS: FROM THE CONQUERED TO THEIR CONQUERORSConquest leads not only to exports of technology from conquerors to those they subjugate; technology may flow in the other direction as well.This is especially likely to occur if a technologically more advanced society is conquered by a technologically less sophisticated foe.In the early twentieth century, to cite just one example, Germany was the world's leader in what today would be called aerospace engineering.During the closing years of the Second World War, the Germans fired V-1 and V-2 missiles at England.The V-1 was jet-powered, used an autopilot to control the missile's speed and altitude, and carried a 1,900-pound explosive warhead.The V-1 had a range of about 160 miles and flew at about 400 miles per hour, a speed which made it vulnerable to Allied aircraft and anti-aircraft guns.More than 9,000 of the missiles were fired at England and another 2,000 at targets on the European continent after the Allied invasion.The V-2 was an even more advanced weapon.It was the world's first ballistic missile and had a range of about 200 miles at a speed of more than 3,000 miles per hour, which made the weapon impossible to intercept.More than 3,000 V-2s were launched by the Germans.Their relatively small warheads, however, limited the damage they were able to produce.When the Allies defeated and occupied Germany, the Americans and Soviets acquired German aviation and rocket technology, along with German scientists, that became the basis for both nation's space and ballistic missile programs—as well as their development of jet aircraft.One important example of conquered-to-conqueror technology transfer from the ancient world is the relationship between Greece and Rome, in which Rome's military conquest paved the way for an enormous flow of Greek technology into the Roman Empire.Rome's conquest of Greece over a period of about sixty-five years began with the so-called First Macedonian War (214–205 BCE).After the disastrous Roman defeat by the Carthaginians at Cannae in 216 BCE, Macedonian King Philip believed that the Romans would not be able to oppose his efforts to expand Macedonian power in Greece and the Aegean.Accordingly, he signed a treaty of alliance with the Carthaginian general Hannibal, in which the Macedonians agreed to support Carthage in its war against Rome in exchange for control over a number of Roman-held territories on the eastern shore of the Adriatic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
|
Odnośniki
|