New Books Network Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)
Mar 7, 2026
Mattie Armstrong-Price, assistant professor and author of Respectability on the Line, studies social and cultural labor history of British and colonial Indian railways. The conversation covers how managers engineered respectability through housing and services. It examines bachelor subcultures, tolerance of nonconforming men, grade- and race-based hierarchies, early union formation, and how benefit funds shaped worker politics.
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Company Towns Had Full Social Infrastructure
- Railway companies built workshop towns with company housing, mechanics' institutes, bathhouses, libraries, and hospitals to foster regulated everyday life.
- Swindon had limited company housing while Jamalpur featured mechanics' institutions, classes, theaters, and company-sponsored medical care.
Paternalism Could Be Surprisingly Permissive
- Paternalistic welfare initiatives sometimes produced unintended permissiveness toward nonnormative domestic lives in company towns.
- Managerial advice urged tolerance for diverse living arrangements and even suggested not repressing homosexuality among employees.
Bachelor Subcultures Flourished In Railway Towns
- Strong bachelor subcultures emerged: census records show many male boarders, scrapbooked portraits hint at intimate male friendships, and Swindon held bachelor balls and a bachelor cricket team.
- Companies recruited single British men to India, producing gender imbalances that reinforced bachelor communities.
