Technology and Culture

Large transportation infrastructure projects are not only long term and costly, but the grander the scale, the more complicated and entangled projects tend to become, often highlighting the balance between public-sector involvement and private-sector engagement, and with political, technological, and economic implications.

Sweden's major transportation infrastructure undertaking in the nineteenth century before the railways, and the subject of Thomas Gauchet's dissertation, is the Göta Canal project. The idea was grand: connect the North Sea and the Baltics through an inland waterway, making use of the recently opened Trollhätte Canal and connecting several lakes from west to east. [End Page 1192]

The project was initiated at a time of upheaval in Sweden. The former Gustavian regime, characterized by monarchical despotism during the reign of Gustavus III (1772–1792), was finally overthrown in a liberal, fairly peaceful revolution in 1809, establishing a formal balance of power between the king, the Parliament, and the courts. Following a war against Russia resulting in the devastating loss of Finland, combined with threats from hostile countries to dissolve Sweden as an independent country, Sweden was at a crossroads. The country needed a new political and national identity, while the economy had to be redirected more to the West. These were some of the fundamental challenges facing Sweden at the time of the initiation of the canal's lengthy construction process.

Gauchet correctly places the Göta Canal project in this framework of complexity and change, thereby following a scholarly tradition of appraising transportation infrastructure projects as multidimensional activities. The aim here, though, adds more to seeing the project in a political framework than as an economic or technological activity. Gauchet's analysis brings to the fore most of the aspects discussed in earlier, primarily Swedish, research on the subject (e.g., Strömbäck, Baltzar von Platen, Thomas Telford och Göta kanal, 1993; and Lindgren, Kanalbyggarna och staten, offentliga vattenbyggnadsföretag i Sverige från medeltiden till 1810, 1993).

All the aspects and events are well perceived and presented, such as the preparations for the canal project up to the final decisions in 1809–10, the collaboration with Thomas Telford and other important British canal engineers, the consequences of the Swedish 1809 liberal revolution and new liberal 1809 constitution, the many difficulties experienced by the canal corporation financially and technologically, and the important role of the project's prime initiator, Baltzar von Platen. However, Gauchet unfortunately does not provide a more elaborated theoretical background. A good alternative would be a perspective whereby the events described by Gauchet reflected a more structured technology/society theoretical view. Institutional theory is another suitable perspective for such studies.

The author's contribution to understanding the Göta Canal project is to bring it into a more general political framework of modern state-formation, which involved the 1814 Swedish union with Norway and the alleged attempts by King Charles XIV John (from 1818) to extend the government's powers. Gauchet does not succeed entirely with these aims. It is true that the Göta Canal project transformed over time from a private-sector initiative to something of a hybrid public-private organization, and it is true that the royal power's role strengthened under Charles John. However, Gauchet's argument that the Göta Canal was brought fully into the public sphere over time seems unjustified. Also, it is less obvious that a clear nationwide-aspiring Swedish canal policy existed in the early 1820s.

A much more gradual development of the project along with the private-sector and public-sector responses to upcoming dilemmas are closer to [End Page 1193] the actual events...