<p>“Deftly combining the history of technology with literary analysis, Daniel White’s new book fascinatingly reveals the centrality of the steam engine to the British imperial imagination. Focusing on the speculative fiction of 1830s Bengal, White traces colonial visions of the future, with everything from air-conditioned trains to steam air balloons. A steam-powered tour de force of colonial literary history.” (Kate Teltscher, Emeritus Fellow, School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, UK)<br>
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“In this well-written, well-researched, and fascinating account, White offers steam as a way to rethink parallel literary and scientific histories that have had significant consequences for colonialism. In White's book, steam is an invention but also an idea, one that contributed to crucial debates about how technological development impacts liberal thought. With characteristically revealing detail, White gives readers a new vision of empire as a place for techno-futurism and its cautious appraisal, which contributes important lessons for our own age of buoyant invention. An unusual book, in the best way.” (James Mulholland, Professor and Associate Head in the English Department, NC State University, USA)<br>
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“Daniel White’s brilliant book explores futurist fictions published in <em>The Bengal Annual </em>and Romantic poetry side by side so as to dissolve the borders between metropolitan and colonial cultural production. Fascinating details emerge of an imperial imagination in which steam, in particular, was firmly fixed as a “romantic machine” that would diffuse European civilization, but which nevertheless generated unexpected perspectives on liberalism and the future of India. His enviable range of references across different liberal-imperialist visions of technology, global capitalism, and British-Indian nationalism informs and energises a discussion that also encompasses activities, friendships, and writings that are fun to read about even today.” (Rosinka Chaudhuri, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India)</p>