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Dossier: Material Constraints

Becoming Concrete: Materiality and Water Infrastructure in Colonial South Asia

Soyons concrets ! Matérialité et infrastructures hydroliques dans l'Asie du Sud coloniale
Gauri Bharat et Bhavya Jain

Résumés

Depuis le milieu du XIXe siècle en Asie du Sud, les ingénieurs coloniaux ont expérimenté l'utilisation du béton pour des projets de construction, dans un contexte de production de nouvelles infrastructures accompagnant les débuts de l'industrie moderne de la construction. Dans cet article, on étudie plus particulièrement les infrastructures hydrauliques en béton en tenant compte des défis posés par l'introduction de toute structure dans l'eau. Par exemple, les piliers placés au milieu de courts d’eau à fort débit peuvent en modifier le tracé et le courant, avec des répercussions sur la structure immergée elle-même. Pour faire face à ces incertitudes, la technique du béton a énormément varié, contrairement à la pratique relativement standardisée d'aujourd'hui. À travers une analyse granulométrique de projets d'infrastructure tels que des brise-lames et des fondations de ponts, de la fin du XIXe au début du XXe siècle, on analyse les expérimentations locales en matière de construction en béton avec des contraintes et dans des contextes matériels, hydrologiques, topographiques et de main d'œuvre inconnus au préalable sur chaque site. On montre que les caractéristiques fondamentales de la technique du béton, des processus chimiques aux processus de construction et au comportement structurel, sont elles-mêmes apparues comme des contraintes, et que les constructeurs ont eu recours à des stratégies et des mises en œuvre différentes selon les circonstances. Du fait de ces improvisations constantes il est compliqué de retracer l’histoire des transferts de technologies entre l'Occident et ses colonies. En conclusion, la traduction des propriétés physiques du béton dans ces projets de construction en Asie du Sud, ne pouvaient être qu'improvisée, diversifiée et localisée.

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Introduction

  • 1 George Walter Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India: Being an Account of the Public Works in that Cou (...)

1In 1894, G. W. Macgeorge wrote a historical account of the colonial public works in South Asia. He stated that “no alien ruling nation has ever stamped on the face of a country more enduring material monuments of its activity than England has done, and is doing, in her great Indian dependency. Not only has she covered the face of British India with a mileage of roads, railways, telegraphs, and irrigation canals […] but the total number of individual works of exceptional magnitude and importance […] probably surpasses that to be found in any equal continuous area in any other part of the world. Other works of public utility, such as water supply, and drainage of towns, docks, harbours, breakwaters, lighthouses, and public buildings of all kinds [form] a contribution of no mean proportions to that sum total of constructive energy, which cannot fail to leave the English name for ever indelibly imprinted on the soil of India.”1

  • 2 Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastav, India, London: Reaktion Books, 2015 (Modern Architectures in His (...)
  • 3 Peter Scriver, The Scaffolding of Empire, Adelaide: Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architectu (...)
  • 4 Sandes, who authored a volume on the history of military engineers in India, described for example (...)

2The agency that accomplished the works Macgeorge admired was the Public Works Department (PWD). In the eyes of the colonial government, the PWD was imagined as a body that would “exercise universal control confided to it over public works in India with the weight of scientific knowledge, with authority and system.”2 This institutional mandate “marked an unprecedented commitment to the building of modern infrastructure in India, as well as the adoption of a consciously rational approach to the design and production of the built environment.” The public works were the “scaffolding of the empire” enabling the colonial regime to consolidate its presence and power, shaping the subcontinent spatially, technologically, and materially.3 Yet, the process of production of these public works was not without its setbacks, improvisations, adjustments, and errors. In fact, across projects and in considerable detail, colonial historians themselves recorded the errors in judgement and construction that marked colonial engineering throughout the 19th century.4 In this article we take a closer look at the construction history of water infrastructures, specifically their design, making, and subsequent performance and maintenance issues. We argue that far from a singularly competent technocratic force, the seemingly rock-solid colonial engineering enterprise was a complex landscape of experimentation and errors, and an entanglement of indigenous and Western colonial materials, labor, and knowledge.

  • 5 Headrick notes that irrigation is unusual among technologies in that it was developed in colonies (...)
  • 6 Edward Sandes, The Military Engineer in India, op. cit. (note 4), p. 7.
  • 7 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 20-21.
  • 8 James Walker and William Parkes, Kurrachee Harbour: Second Report of J. Walker; and Report of the (...)
  • 9 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 33.
  • 10 Ibid., p. 75-76.

3We focus on water infrastructures such as harbors, railway and other bridges constructed over rivers, and dams—in short, buildings and structures that physically and materially deal with water. Projects such as harbors and bridges involve the natural flow of water, whereas other projects, such as dams and weirs, are meant to control and channel the flow of water. Among the early large-scale works undertaken in the early to mid-19th century were massive networks of irrigation canals built across northern India. Although these works gained fame as a “laboratory for colonial hydraulic engineering,” Capt. John Calvin, celebrated as a pioneer of irrigation in north India, had no prior experience in the field.5 Colonial historians such as Sandes writing in 1935, noted the works were marked by a number of “serious mistakes.” Nevertheless, these flaws were scripted into the heroic framing of these works, since “it was not [to be] expected that such an undertaking would be smooth and easy.”6 By the mid-19th century, the rise of shipping and the expansion of the railways introduced new kinds of water infrastructure projects to the colonial scene, namely harbor works and railway bridges. It is during this time that Portland cement first appears to have been used regularly across the sub-continent. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1859 gave the British shipping industry a major boost, since the canal greatly shortened the travel time between England and South Asia.7 A harbor at Karachi had been under discussion since the 1850s, and was finally constructed between 1869 and 1874.8 Not only did it contribute to making the western coasts of South Asia more accessible and significant for shipping and trade but, as Headrick noted, it directly increased colonial revenues from £116,000 in 1843, when the region was brought under colonial rule, to nearly £350,000 in the 1870s.9 We begin our discussion on concrete construction with this example of the Karachi harbor, where blocks of Portland cement concrete were used possibly for the first time on a large scale in South Asia. We draw parallels with other harbors, particularly Chennai (formerly known as Madras), built in 1876, Colombo (built in 1875), and Mormugao (built in 1890). They were all crucial to the expansion of the colonial economy and they all deployed concrete for construction, in spite of considerable challenges and constraints. The next type of works we discuss are railway bridges, the concrete foundations of which presented an unprecedented challenge to colonial engineering. The mighty rivers of the subcontinent had large floodplains and often violent floods. Headrick notes that the bridge projects required some of the largest financial outlays of the time. In the period between 1880 and 1914, just four bridges—two across the Ganges near Delhi and Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), one on the Indus at Sukkur, and one on the river Sone—cost approximately 1.4 million out of a total expenditure of 10 million on all railway bridges built across the subcontinent at the time.10 We focus on the challenges of constructing such exceptional foundations to reveal the locally improvized and thus vastly divergent ways in which concrete was used across South Asia.

  • 11 John Summerson, “What is the History of Construction?” Construction History, vol. 1, 1985, p. 1. U (...)
  • 12 Silke Kapp, Katie Lloyd Thomas, João Marcos de Almeida Lopes, “Introduction: How to Look at Archit (...)
  • 13 Alan Moncrieff, Handbook and Directory of the Concrete Industry in India, Bombay: Concrete Associa (...)

4Using concrete as our analytical entry point, we are interested in how the colonial public work projects were constructed. This is not a history of cements and concretes per se, but of the relationship between colonial infrastructure projects and material developments. Focusing on what Summerson describes as “building worlds”—in other words, the “total process of getting a building up on a site”—the article explicitly follows a construction history approach.11 The detailed reports prepared by colonial engineers and supervisors, often immediately after the project was completed, are our primary source for the study. They provide construction specifications, anecdotes of material procurements, unexpected developments, and changes in design and construction plans. The expanded frame of construction history brings into the analytical fold processes such as material supply, testing, design debates and negotiations, and actors ranging from professional institutes to building contractors and laborers. These are typically neglected areas of study in built environment histories where design continues to be framed as “a (relatively) autonomous field” and construction was historiographically sidelined as being irrelevant for the higher aspirations of architecture “proper.”12 In reality, however, every colonial building project—be it a bridge or a reservoir—emerged through a multitude of intricate processes, each of which were shaped by the design and larger intent, of course, but equally by the desire for economy, considerations of structural performance, capacities of material and labor, and the vagaries of site and weather, to name just a few. Concrete construction was constrained by multiple such factors. A key limitation was the irregular and short supply of cement for most of this period. It was imported via the sea from Britain, and its availability at various locations across the subcontinent was contingent upon shipping and land transportation networks. Local manufacture of cement would not begin until 1914.13 As a result, through the later decades of the 19th century, colonial engineers worked with a wide range of material substitutes which impacted the chemical composition of the resultant concretes. The archival reports also reveal considerable variations in the different stages of concrete construction; i.e., mixing, molding, and pouring. Depending on the circumstances and needs of each building site, these stages had to be modified. The typical stages of concrete construction became, in themselves, constraints that engineers on different sites had to contend with. The construction history of concrete thus complicates the apparent rationality of colonial engineering, as well as the idea that its forms and intentions drew from Western technical knowledge alone.

A postcolonial reading of colonial building technologies

  • 14 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 6-7.
  • 15 David Arnold, “Europe, Technology, and Colonialism in the 20th Century,” History and Technology, v (...)
  • 16 Vikram Bhatt and Peter Scriver, After the Masters: Contemporary Indian Architecture, Ahmedabad: Ma (...)

5The dominant trope in histories of technology used to be the unidirectional transfer of knowledge from the West to the colonies. Headrick notes that the process of technology transfer was instrumental for the extraction of resources. Rapidly industrializing European economies needed raw materials, which were being imported from regions across the world. Also, increasingly affluent Western consumers demanded goods such as coffee, tea, sugar, and textiles, much of which was produced in the colonies and shipped back to Europe. New infrastructure projects in regions such as South Asia facilitated this trade, which in turn upheld British supremacy in the global political arena.14 From this “diffusionist” perspective, histories of technology in the colonies are viewed primarily as a “legacy” of the colonizing forces, and more importantly, as epistemological projections of Western technological histories alone.15 Within architectural discourses, this took the form of attributing modernity to the European training that South Asian architects received, or to iconic architects such as Kahn or Le Corbusier, who designed important architectural works in the 1950s and 60s.16

  • 17 David Arnold, “Europe, Technology, and Colonialism in the 20th Century,” op. cit. (note 15), p. 87
  • 18 Ibid., p. 99.

6In recent decades, postcolonial scholars have advanced perspectives that challenge the Western-centricism of technological histories. Rather than a simple diffusion of technology from the Western metropolitan arena to the colonies, where technology is only the “instrument of [colonial] power relations,” David Arnold argues that, technology was, in reality, a “cultural space in which various forms of interaction and exchange, or mimesis and reversal, became historically possible.”17 It is this perspective that we bring to the study of how and why concrete was used across the subcontinent. Portland cement as a material and concrete as a technology did not simply arrive on the subcontinent’s shores and become embedded in its building world. Rather, Portland cement was used in ways that often differed European building practice. Additionally, as we will see in later sections, other materials such as lime, stones of various kinds and even brick got incorporated into reinforced concrete construction. In these early decades of concrete use, we witness a meshwork of practices shaped by the idea of concrete as a sort of technological meta-narrative, but also by highly localized situations and strategies. The relationship between these two conditions, however, is not a binary of the universal and the local, wherein the latter represents a higher epistemological ground. Instead, in the construction practices in and around concrete, we see a particular kind of building knowledge, variously “appropriated, hybridized, or empirically arrived at,” which also became part of the Western world’s “technical know-how.”18

  • 19 Tim Ingold, Making Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London: Routledge, 2013, p. 29 (...)

7To analyze the complex strands of concrete construction, we draw from Ingold’s four-part framing of technology as a human endeavor. Ingold suggests that technology constitutes, and may be understood as object, process, knowledge, and volition. Each of these themes offers insights into specific aspects of the “human-labour process as it is involved in the production of things.”19 Extending this to concrete, we specifically explore three aspects. First, we trace how engineers dealt with the constraints of sourcing and working with the constituent raw materials that make up concrete. Next, we examine the processes of concrete construction, like the making of the casing or formwork, the preparation of the concrete mix and its proper placement into the casing, and finally “curing,” or regularly pouring water on the concrete to ensure that the chemical reaction of the cement is completed and it attains strength. Finally, we are interested in the range of labor groups and knowledge systems that each step of concrete entailed, such as the preparation of casing by carpenters, or the grading and cleaning of sand and stone, to name just a few. We apply this framework across case studies of harbor works and bridges, and discuss how the raw materials, the processes of concreting, its structural and formal potentials, and its inherent plasticity each presented a constraint in the early decades of its use and was then overcome in diverse ways. We argue that concrete, far from being a singular narrative of technological development, when disaggregated into its constituent material and processual threads, reveals a complex history of its genesis, use, and spread across colonial South Asia.

Concretes, in the plural, and a tale of substitutions

  • 20 William Henry Price, “The Manora Breakwater, Kurrachee,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institu (...)

8The Karachi harbor (1869-1874) was one of the early projects to use a substantial quantity of concrete in South Asia. The harbor works included docks, basins, and wharves in the surrounding areas, to stabilize the landscape, control the flow of water in and around the harbor, and secure the site from sea waves and storms. What interests us particularly is the breakwater structure at Manora Point, which was built as a wall extending from the shore into the sea for nearly 1500 feet. The base of this wall was built using rubble placed on the seabed, while the superstructure consisted of large concrete blocks, 12 feet by 8 feet by 4 1/2 feet in size and weighing 27 tons each. Nearly 2000 such blocks were cast on shore and then maneuvered into position using a specially designed “Titan” (see fig. 1). The Titan moved on rails between the casting site on the shore and the breakwater. It lifted the blocks and then lowered them into the water. Next, divers guided the blocks into position. The blocks were held in place by their own weight without the need for mortar. A section of the top of the breakwater wall towards the shore was covered with a concrete capping, while it was left uncovered for the rest of the length.20

Figure 1: Side elevation and end-view of Manora breakwater construction with divers setting the blocks on rubble masonry.

Figure 1: Side elevation and end-view of Manora breakwater construction with divers setting the blocks on rubble masonry.

Source: “The Manora Breakwater, Kurrachee,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, no. 43, 1876.

  • 21 W. H. Price, “Concrete Blocks for Manora Breakwater,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, v (...)
  • 22 “The Manufacture of Portland Cement,” The Manufacturer and Builder, 1877, p. 32.

9The use of Portland cement on this scale was unprecedented at the time in South Asia. In fact, engineers involved in the project noted that stone and lime were being considered as alternative building materials: stone for the exposed sections of the breakwater above the water line and lime instead of Portland cement for the bulk of the concrete blocks. The stone option was abandoned after the executive engineer for the project, Major William Merewhether, scouted for suitable quarries along the coast all the way from Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) to the east of Karachi and along the Persian Gulf to Bushire in the west. He concluded that quarrying adequate quantities, delivering them to the nearest port, and shipping them to the harbor site in Karachi would exorbitantly raise the construction cost.21 Therefore, it was decided to build the entire breakwater using concrete blocks. J.B. White and Brothers, one of the manufacturers from whom Portland cement was imported for the breakwaters, first supplied the material for the concrete blocks of Dover harbor in England (built in 1846). Since the mid-19th century, this cement manufactured in England grew its export base across the world, claiming that Portland cement proved to function well in a multitude of climates.22

  • 23 See for instance, Julius George Medley, The Roorkee Treatise on Civil Engineering in India, vol. 1 (...)
  • 24 Samuel Fitzhugh Cox, “Use of Concrete in India,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, vol. 5 (...)
  • 25 The exchange between South Asia and British and European examples of detailed technical informatio (...)
  • 26 W. H. Price, “Concrete Blocks for Manora Breakwater,” op. cit. (note 21), p. 399.

10For the concrete mix, the engineers had considered using lime rather than Portland cement. Limes of various kinds had a long history in the construction practices of the subcontinent. In fact, by the mid-19th century, colonial engineers were drawing from indigenous techniques to experiment with different kinds of limes. They studied their occurrence and chemical composition to determine if these limes could be used in alternative forms of concrete.23 However, the limes and their methods of preparation varied considerably from place to place. Reflecting on the state of concrete usage at the time, engineer Fitzhugh Cox noted that the proportions of a lime concrete mix depended entirely on the quality of the lime, surkhi (brick dust), and sand, and therefore “must be different in different localities with their varying qualities and sorts of materials”.24 This degree of variation possibly presented a challenge for the Karachi breakwaters, given the very large number of identical blocks that the structure required. Portland cement, on the other hand, could be used in fixed proportions according to standards established in England. The engineers at Karachi indeed drew upon concrete mix formulas used in the construction of harbors in Britain and Europe.25 In addition to the desire for consistency, what tipped the scales in favor of Portland cement was the possibility of direct import from England via the sea route. Had the building site been further inland, the engineers would have settled for lime.26

  • 27 W. H. Price, “Portland Cement at Kurrachee,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, 1873, p. 3 (...)
  • 28 Price published the details of these comparative experiments and the results for the benefit of ot (...)

11At the breakwater site, the engineers initiated the process of making blocks. W. H. Price, the superintendent of the Karachi harbor, reported that the proportions decided for the concrete mix were drawn from the harbor works that had been completed in Alderney in the Channel Islands. One part of Portland cement was to be used with eight parts of sand and stone in fixed proportions. As the engineers received shipments of Portland cement from different companies, they realized that the weight of different brands of cement varied by up to 10 lbs per wooden cask. Price published a detailed report mentioning the brand of cement, the date of dispatch and arrival at Karachi, and the changes of weight and bulk (see fig. 2).27 The engineers assumed that the change had occurred on account of the moisture absorbed or “air slaking” during the sea voyage. They countered this constraint by adding less water to the concrete mix, noting that the process did “not appear to have been injurious… but rather on the contrary was beneficial”.28 More importantly, since the ingredients for concrete were measured in volume, the differences in the bulk and density of cement had an impact on the concrete mix as well. Consequently, the engineers adjusted the amount of cement being added to each batch of concrete blocks and recorded that anywhere from 5 to 10% more cement had to be added to compensate for the variations.

Figure 2: Published report comparing the weight and volume and cement before and after the sea voyage from Britain to Karachi.

Figure 2: Published report comparing the weight and volume and cement before and after the sea voyage from Britain to Karachi.

Source: William Henry Price, “Portland Cement at Kurrachee,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, 1873.

  • 29 Ibid., p. 325.
  • 30 This experimentation went on for a considerable period before a fixed block-casting process could (...)

12While these quantities appear minute, they did cause variations in the concrete mix, prompting the engineers to reflect on possible impacts on the strength of the blocks. But a more significant change to the concrete mix was to follow. After nearly a quarter of the blocks had been cast, the Karachi engineers, following advice from the engineers of another British harbor at Tyne Pier, reduced the amount of cement being used by one-third and increased the quantities of sand and shingle (coarse sand) accordingly. To compensate for what was now a weaker concrete, they allowed the blocks to set for an extended period of one month—compared to the earlier setting time of ten days.29 The motivation behind this change was primarily financial.30 Reducing the amount of Portland cement cut the cost of the blocks by twenty-five per cent. These multiple changes contradicted the consistency that Portland cement as a standardized building material appeared to imply. Not only did the actual bags of cement vary depending on the manufacturer and the sea journeys during their import, the engineers themselves resorted to substitutions on account of the economic exigencies of the project.

  • 31 Dobson noted that this was the “ordinary method” for using beton on the European continent. A key (...)
  • 32 William Henry Price, “Concrete Blocks for Manora Breakwater,” op. cit. (note 21), p. 401.
  • 33 Sérgio Ferro, Concrete as Weapon, op. cit. (note 12), p. 19.
  • 34 Fitzhugh Cox, Use of Concrete in India, op. cit. (note 24), p. 24.

13The reduction in proportion of cement and resultant increase in volume of other materials had an impact on the process of casting the blocks as well. For example, larger pieces of stone, or “quarry lumps,” as they were known, were used as part of the concrete mix. However, these were not mixed in with the other ingredients of concrete at the same time, as is standard practice today. Rather, the cement, sand, and shingle were combined in a motorized concrete mixer, brought to the casting location, and then placed inside the wooden cases alternately with the quarry lumps.31 Since the cement acted to bind all the other materials, the reduction in the proportion of cement meant that the process of casting the blocks had to be carried out with greater precision. W. H. Price, the engineer supervising the project describes how an “intelligent" mason was required to be present when the concrete was being poured to ensure that the concrete mix adequately covered all the quarry lumps and filled the gaps and crevices. With each block, the mason would have to gauge the consistency of the mix, adding water if required.32 The fact that the final quality of the concrete block depended on the mason’s judgement presents an interesting counterpoint to the seemingly precise procedures of cement specification and testing. It also explains the constant complaints by colonial engineers that the shortage of skilled local labor was one of the key challenges in expanding concrete construction. Borrowing from Ferro’s terminology, the use of concrete was not an outcome of “prescriptive knowledge” and was constrained by the “know-how at the construction site”.33 In fact, across the ranks of the PWD, it was widely believed that the limited use of concrete at the time was a consequence of the need for supervision at every stage, i.e., mixing, pouring, and compacting, failing which the laborers would produce inadequate work.34

  • 35 William John Bird Clerke, Impounding-reservoirs in India, and the Design of Masonry Dams: The Tans (...)
  • 36 Public Works Department, Papers relating to Water Supply Schemes in India, Madras: The Superintend (...)
  • 37 Archibald Thomas Mackenzie, History of the Periyar Project, Madras: The Superintendent of Governme (...)
  • 38 Ibid., p. 9.

14The inclusion of quarry lumps alongside the concrete mix presents a striking similarity to rubble masonry, particularly the kind deployed in water infrastructures like dams, where masonry walls were constructed out of stone rubble with lime or Portland cement mortars. In the case of the Tansa Dam in Bombay (now Mumbai), the engineer noted that in the process of construction, “every stone was laid full in mortar, each one being selected so as to roughly fit the place it was to be laid in… and all the spaces between it and adjacent stones were filled flush with mortar.”35 This process is similar to the one used for the blocks in Karachi, except that the former is described as a masonry structure while the latter was called concrete. In a dam constructed as part of the water works in Jabalpur (Jubbulpore), the foundations and the main dam were similarly constructed out of rubble stone masonry set in Portland Cement mortar, with additional mortar used to plug the gaps through which water could eventually leak.36 The similarity in the material palette of rubble stone masonry and concretes of this period was apparent to the engineers across the subcontinent. It led Major Pennycuick, engineer in charge of the Periyar Dam project in southern India, to argue that “concrete is nothing more than uncoursed rubble reduced to its simplest form.”37 This conflation, or at least continuity, between masonry construction and the otherwise monolithic concrete is rooted in the practices of concrete construction at the time, wherein constraints of material supply and the precision demanded in mixing and pouring were mediated by the inclusion of stone within the concrete mass. This, in turn, required the employment of masons as intermediaries facilitating the process of concreting. Most importantly, in spite of the potential plasticity of concrete, rubble masonry and concrete were considered synonymous and thus used interchangeably. As Pennycuick pointed out, “the value of the two materials is identical […] and the selection between the two depends entirely on their relative costs.”38

  • 39 Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, Harbours and Docks: Their Physical Features, History, Constructio (...)
  • 40 Ibid., p. 121.

15The breakwater in Karachi became significant for global discourses on the construction of harbors and docks. Considered the first instance of sloping blocks laid by the “Titan” on such a large scale, it was extensively featured in European, British, and American magazines and discussed in international engineering forums. It was looked at as a case study for subsequent breakwater constructions.39 It was of particular interest locally as well, considering that the structure weathered consecutive monsoons and faced only minor problems. A similar breakwater was constructed in Chennai (Madras), but it experienced more damage owing to the severe coastal storms and high tides in the region. The superstructure in Madras had to be altered by changing the shape and slope, while adding better bonds between the blocks.40 Other breakwaters constructed across South Asia made further improvements on the Karachi system of sloping blocks (fig. 3). In terms of concrete use, however, there were considerable variations. For instance, the blocks in Chennai (Madras) harbor contained almost twice as much cement, proportionally, as the Karachi blocks.

Figure 3: Projects that improved on the rubble mound block superstructure method of building breakwaters as employed for Manora in Karachi.

Figure 3: Projects that improved on the rubble mound block superstructure method of building breakwaters as employed for Manora in Karachi.

Source: “Sloping-Block System for Superstructures,” Harbour and Docks: Their Physical Features, History, Construction, Equipment, and Maintenance, 1885.

  • 41 J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the I (...)
  • 42 Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, Harbours and Docks, op. cit. (note 39), p. 141-142.

16In the projects completed between the 1860s and 1880s, there is a clear gap between the concept of concrete as a standardized material and the complex realities of construction sites. Even the basic principle of the proportions of constituent elements was open to interpretation. As one engineer observed, the generally accepted proportion was to use one part of the Portland cement to eight parts of other materials, usually stone and shingle, or coarse, gravelly sand. But since other ingredients were measured by volume in boxes, the actual quantities depended on how they were measured: i.e., sand and shingle combined or separately. When measured in combination with shingle, the volume of the sand would be greater, since it was a finer material that filled the interstices between the shingle. As a result, depending on the processes of measuring the raw materials, the actual concrete mix varied.41 This was further compounded by the various actors involved in the processes of concrete casting. What is important to iterate, however, is that these variations notwithstanding, the idea of concrete as a relatively standardized material and its increasingly known hydraulic properties made it possible to conceptualize the Karachi harbor works as an assemblage of large blocks. The standardization imagined was of two kinds: first of material properties and second of moldability. Concrete alone could be cast into identical sized blocks, with details such as holes which facilitated lifting, transporting, and depositing them in place on the seabed.42 Having seen how material properties were in fact variable, we shall discuss, in the next section, how moldability also proved to be a constraint and led to multiple trajectories of construction practice.

Challenges of moldability

  • 43 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 70.
  • 44 Imrie Bell, “On Sinking Wells for the Foundations of the Piers of the Jumna Bridge, Delhi Railway, (...)
  • 45 Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850-1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p (...)

17Railway bridges across the rivers of the subcontinent presented a particular kind of engineering challenge. The rivers were not only much larger than those in Europe; in addition, they flooded their banks in unpredictable ways during the monsoon months. The flooding scoured the riverbed and created vast flood plains, which the railway bridges had to withstand.43 In the earliest instances, railway bridges were made of iron, or using stone and brick arches. In the latter case, given the small spans possible, the bridge required multiple foundations in the riverbed, the construction of which was complicated. Foundations in riverbeds were typically built using an indigenous technique of sinking wells. A cylindrical structure of timber or iron was laid on the riverbed when dry, and courses of brickwork were built on top. Simultaneously, sand was scooped out from inside the well using phoura and jham, which were respectively small and large sized indigenous spades, to enable the entire ensemble to slowly sink into the riverbed.44 This process continued until the wells had reached adequate depth. If the riverbed was not dry, then a coffer dam or “artificial island” was created to enable the sinking of the well. This technique was used for record-breaking depths of more than 140 feet for bridges constructed across the Ganges.45 Within this system of well foundations, concrete was brought into use, but in two distinctly different ways.

Figure 4: Sketch showing the “native jham,” or tool used by traditional Indian well-diggers above, and below, the larger sized and relatively mechanized jham developed by colonial engineers.

Figure 4: Sketch showing the “native jham,” or tool used by traditional Indian well-diggers above, and below, the larger sized and relatively mechanized jham developed by colonial engineers.

Source: Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. 28, Session 1868-69.

  • 46 Brick bats are smaller pieces of brick, either broken or made by placing a thin layer of clay, whi (...)
  • 47 Edward Davidson, The Railways of India: With an Account of Their Rise, Progress, and Construction, (...)

18The first, more straightforward use of concrete was to “heart” the wells: once the timber, brick, or iron curbs were sunk, the center was filled with concrete to create a solid pier. Since in such an approach the concrete was primarily an infill material, it was often made using materials such as lime, surkhi (brick dust), and brick bats.46 In one striking example of a bridge across the Tonse River in the United Provinces in northern India, the seven piers of the bridge each rested on ten wells, 12 feet in diameter.47 Such a large and elaborate foundation was necessitated by the fact that the riverbed consisted of sand with uneven layers of clay.

  • 48 G. W. Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India, op. cit. (note 1), p. 383-384.
  • 49 Ibid., p. 385.
  • 50 A cofferdam was a structure built below water to create an enclosed area from which water could be (...)
  • 51 In a published discussion around the use of concrete in the construction of docks, engineers used (...)

19The second mode of concrete use is seen in the case of the bridge over the River Indus at Attock. Since the riverbed was rocky, wells could not be sunk. Instead, bags of cement were lowered directly into the water to form the well. The bridge was part of the North-western Railway, which covered large parts of Punjab (in modern-day India) and modern-day Pakistan, connecting Delhi, Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, and Peshawar. It spanned the river Indus, a snow-fed river with very fast flowing icy waters and highly unpredictable floods. At Attock, where the railway bridge was to be constructed, the river narrowed to 600 feet of water at the surface and flowed in two channels separated by a rocky outcrop, which further increased the speed of the water. The region was also prone to earthquakes, and the engineers considered it “more advisable to use a more yielding and elastic material for the piers instead of brick or stone.”48 The final design included an open wrought-iron framework for the spans, with a railway line placed above and a motorable road passing between the girders. The girders, of a length ranging from 250 to 300 feet, were supported on piers. The foundations of these piers, like other bridge foundations across the subcontinent, were conceptualized as wells. However, the design had to be drastically modified due to the nature of the riverbed, which was rocky and traversed by crevices filled with fine sand.49 This did not permit the sinking of wells in the traditional manner. The construction of a timber cofferdam to enclose the area for the construction of piers was also impossible due to the strong water currents. Consequently, the engineers decided to use the unusual strategy of lowering cotton bags loosely filled with Portland cement into the river to form a cofferdam-like enclosure within and upon which the pier foundation would be built.50 To do this, barges were moored along the edge of the proposed well, and local divers went down to the rock bed to clear loose sand and other material. This was especially challenging because the very cold rapid waters prevented the divers from staying below water for long. Once the rock bed was cleared, the bags with Portland cement were lowered and jammed into the crevices and then deposited in layers until the stack reached the water surface level. The cement subsequently hardened to form a solid wall. Compared to the previous method where concrete formed the “heart” of the brick, timber, or iron piers, the “bag system” itself formed the basic well into which more concrete was subsequently filled.51 The use of the bags in such cases was clearly a substitute for molding the cement into the desired form of the base and walls of the pier foundations.

  • 52 Ibid., p. 145.
  • 53 E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, op. cit. (note 31), p. 51-52 (...)
  • 54 J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” op. cit. (note 41), p. 167-168.
  • 55 Ibid., p. 150.

20This technique, described as the “bag-system” or “bag-concrete,” was pioneered in the British Isles in the construction of the Aberdeen harbor by engineer Dyce Cay, after which it was used in other harbor works as well.52 Dobson, writing in 1850, credits this technique to the Italians who used sacks filled with béton to repair masonry under water.53 This method, having entered the circuits of engineering discussion in Britain and on the European continent, was the subject of considerable deliberation. Challenges such as the bags’ bursting during construction elicited comments on the best materials and size for the bags. A larger quantity of cement was required due to the uncertainty of even mixing.54 Engineers also compared the merits of using bags versus concrete blocks, chiefly concerned about the uncertain positioning of the bags under water and the impossibility of rectifying errors once the bags had been placed. Blocks, on the other hand could be hauled back up and repositioned correctly.55 On the whole, however, the bag-concrete system was clearly a tactical response to the challenges of casting concrete under water or on uncertain surfaces such as riverbeds.

  • 56 Julius George Medley, The Roorkee Treatise on Civil Engineering in India, vol. 2, Roorkee: Thomaso (...)

21Although the bags lowered at Attock contained only Portland cement, in other instances the bags were filled with a range of different materials and mixtures. In a relatively small causeway across the Soan River, the bag system was used to create a temporary bridge structure. Here, along the profile of the pathway, wooden piles were driven into the bed and the space between them cleared of sand and other loose material. Then, gunnysacks filled with concrete made of lime, brick dust, and shingle from the river were placed adjacent to each other along the cleared bed. The moldability of the bag containing the concrete served to level the uneven riverbed and to create a relatively flat surface for the final roadway, as it had for the building of the Attock bridge. Interestingly, the roadway was laid using a mixture of rubble concrete, where large pieces of stone were set in place using the same lime concrete mixture. Finally, slabs of stone were placed on top and chiselled as required to create the flat top of the causeway.56 Though the Soan causeway was a very different design and project, compared to the foundations of railway bridges, the use of bagged concrete was based on similar principles. The malleability of the bags meant that the concrete could be packed into the crevices creating a more even or workable surface for the next stage of construction.

Figure 5: Drawing and image of Attock bridge, originally published in Engineering illustrating the rocky base that posed a challenge for laying foundations.

Figure 5: Drawing and image of Attock bridge, originally published in Engineering illustrating the rocky base that posed a challenge for laying foundations.

Source: “The Attock Bridge,” Scientific American, Supplement no. 470, 1885.

  • 57 E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, op. cit. (note 31), p. 105.
  • 58 A.T. Mackenzie, History of the Periyar Project, op. cit. (note 37), p. 61-63.
  • 59 Stoney, The New Chatravati Bridge, 1891, p. 19.
  • 60 G. W. Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India, op. cit. (note 1), p. 96-104.

22Before the idea of “bags” as a system of concreting took hold in engineering circles, indigenous builders had been known to use bags filled with materials such as clay in many places across the globe. The method was widely used to make cofferdams, where bags of clay were stacked up to form a water-tight enclosure.57 In South Asia, in the course of the Periyar dam project in southern India, reports describe the popular use of sandbags for the purpose of closing all sorts of gaps in construction under-water. For the main dam of the Periyar project, sandbags were used to fill the crevices and even out the unequal surfaces of the rocky bottom. Later, when sudden floods damaged the dam under construction, sandbags were also used to close the gaps formed in the enclosures built in the water58. In the case of a bridge over the River Chatravati, also in southern India, wells using timber were being sunk into the river bed for the bridge’s foundations. Once the wells reached the rock bed, bags filled with clay were placed as a wall along the inner surface of the well to enable the interior to be pumped out and to prevent sand coming in from the gaps between the timber.59 At a road bridge built over Kanhan river in 1866-73, bags filled with clay were placed within a double coffer dam in order to create a barrier which prevented the water and sand from flowing into the excavation for the bridge foundations.60 The use of bagging in diverse locations suggests that this may have been a common improvisation when builders required a malleable mass that was nonetheless as dense as stone or masonry, and would not disintegrate or wash away with the flow of water. What is fascinating is that this improvisation began to grow into a “system,” or at least some semblance of one, as engineers sought to organize and consolidate ways of working with concrete.

Figure 6: Towards the center of the drawing of the dam across the Periyar River, we see “pier breached in February 1890,” stabilized using “sand bag bank.”

Figure 6: Towards the center of the drawing of the dam across the Periyar River, we see “pier breached in February 1890,” stabilized using “sand bag bank.”

Source: A.T. Mackenzie, History of the Periyar Project, Madras: The Superintendent of Government Printing, 1899.

23Returning to the bridge at Attock, after the completion of the foundation wells using bags of Portland cement, the engineers began to work on preparing the foundations to install the iron columns that would support the superstructure of the bridge. Since the iron columns had to be lowered and anchored inside the wells, the wells could not be simply filled up with concrete as was commonly done on other bridges. Instead, the inner cavity of the well was partitioned into smaller compartments into which the iron columns could be lowered. These partitions were made in the same way as the outer wall of the well, i.e. using bags of Portland cement. However, on pumping the sand and debris out, the engineers found that the rocky base on which the foundation wells had been built was not as strong as they had anticipated. It was honey-combed and split up by small fissures that would allow water to seep into the wells and corrode the iron columns. At this juncture, the engineers decided to fill the wells with cement concrete, creating a massive, solid pier. Since the iron superstructure of the bridge required support, the question of anchoring the iron columns into the foundations remained.

  • 61 G. W. Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India, op. cit. (note 1), p. 386-387.
  • 62 Patrick Doyle, “The Nerbudda Bridge at Broach,” Indian Engineering, vol. 26, 1899, p.  362.

24What followed was an unusual and complicated strategy. After the concrete inside the foundation wells had started to solidify, the engineers cut into the pier to partially hollow it out again. This time, they continued deeper into the rocky riverbed until they were satisfied that a stable layer had been reached. The iron column was placed into the hollowed-out core, which was then filled with a fine Portland Cement mix. This process was repeated eight times for each of the foundation piers.61 While the use of concrete to “heart” such bridge foundation wells was a common practice, the initial strategy of creating a hollow well using bags of cement was the unusual step. Conceptually, however, the concrete bags were replacing the timber, iron, or brick with which the well walls were typically made. This kind of substitution was not an anecdotal case. The construction of a bridge across the River Narmada at Bharuch in western India required a very large quantity of stone for the construction of piers. Stone of adequate sizes became difficult to procure, while bags of Portland cement were more readily available. The engineers decided to use gunnysacks, two cubic feet in volume, filled with Portland cement as a substitute for stone in the masonry works.62 What is very unusual in these examples is that the moldability of concrete was evident and understood by builders, yet the forms that concrete was molded into remained akin to stone. At best, by using bags, the engineers were using concrete as a somewhat flexible stone.

  • 63 For a detailed discussion on types of caissons and the circumstances in which they may be used, se (...)
  • 64 J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” op. cit. (note 41), p. 142-143.

25Molding concrete underwater remained a major challenge during these decades. One technique commonly considered by European and British engineers for casting concrete in situ under water was to use caissons, which were hollow wooden boxes with a removable bottom, lined with canvas or tarpaulin. These were placed under water and concrete was poured into the boxes. After it had set, the box was removed.63 That this was not done in Attock is possibly linked to the constraint of timber and skilled labor required to set up wooden formwork and the additional challenge of keeping the caissons in place in the fast-flowing waters of the river. However, there was a deeper ontological uncertainty around the plasticity of concrete as well. In discussions between engineers, there were two divergent schools of thought on what “plastic” concrete meant. One school held that concrete had to be rapidly mixed, put into bags and placed in position, after which it could be left to harden. Other engineers believed that concrete thus prepared had to be allowed to partially set before it was lowered into water.64 What this debate underscores is that the understanding of concrete, at that point in time, when it was beginning to be quite widely used across the globe, remained fluid both conceptually and in practice. Additionally, the development of discourse, especially the reports and treatises on engineering, was taking place by aggregating experiments from across the globe. Authors were creating categories of technological practice—such as types of underwater foundations or ways of using concrete—based on ideas and approaches from different projects that came to their notice. When reported in minute detail and circulated across the ranks of colonial engineering institutions, various improvisations, such as the foundations of the Attock Bridge or the blocks of the Karachi breakwater, all became grist to the mill of global technological discourses.

Conclusion

  • 65 Peter Scriver, “Imperial Progress: On the Impracticality of Problem-Solving in Colonial Indian Bui (...)
  • 66 Andrew Feenberg, “Modernity, Technology and the Forms of Rationality,” Philosophy Compass, vol. 6, (...)
  • 67 Peter Scriver, The Scaffolding of Empire, op. cit. (note 3), p. 10.

26The early days of cement concrete usage in South Asia present a varied landscape of practice. We observe deviations from European proportions of concrete mixes along with improvisations, like rubble and bag-concrete. In sum, concrete was not a fixed or even a consistent entity. What is particularly intriguing is the apparent consolidation of the idea of concrete, vis-a-vis the accepted and recognized diversity of concrete practices. Engineers, in their lectures and reports at engineering institutions in England, South Asia, and other parts of the colonial world, discussed the ways in which concretes were being produced at different locations, shaped by a central idea but materialized in radically different ways. Through the last decades of the 19th century, concrete use gradually increased across the globe and in South Asia as well. The improvisational nature of concrete, however, remained a persistent feature. In fact, improvisations were the primary way of working for the colonial engineer, rather than an aberration on the journey towards technological competence. This way of working sits somewhere between the public works’ rationalized mode of building and the indigenous, craft-based approach that characterized local building practices.65 If, as Feenberg suggests, modern technology may be understood as a “sum of resources, raw materials and system components” that serves a “role in the technical system” without having “its own inner principle of movement, its own essential core of being,” then craft, in contrast, is “a pre-existing form embracing a wide range of values and meanings” which are “realized by the craftsperson in materials conceived as pre-destined for the work.” In this formulation, craft-based modes of production incorporate the role of human agents while modern technologies reduce people into “deskilled producers” and “passive consumers.”66 In the varied processes of concrete construction, however, we find that the binary between the colonial engineers as the modern technocrat vis-a-vis the craftsperson working with their materials does not necessarily hold. Far from being purveyors of a technology that emanated on Western shores, the harbour works, bridges, dams and other public works show that they worked with and through the material, producing localized responses to the constraints of working with a new material and technology in unfamiliar sites. Additionally, the engineers depended on local skills and knowledge, to materialise concrete in different situations and circumstances. Improvisations, though initially a “putative scaffolding” for the colonial empire building process, gradually developed into the very structure of how the public works department operated.67

  • 68 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 9.
  • 69 Robby Fivez, A Concrete State: Constructing Materials and Building Ambitions in the (Belgian) Cong (...)

27In terms of the circulation of technologies between the Western world and colonial South Asia, the genesis and spread of concrete construction comprised two strands. First, there was the geographic relocation of materials and knowledge in the form of engineers who brought their expertise from Britain and other parts of the world to projects in South Asia. The second is what Headrick describes as “cultural diffusion” where knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to concrete construction were transferred across sites.68 However, on the ground, concrete construction practices vacillated between these two kinds of transfer. Material and building knowledge arrived from Britain, but almost immediately transformed, based on the exigencies of the project and site. Further, experiences from South Asian building sites fed back into colonial engineering knowledge systems through repositories such as reports and lectures, where engineers shared their experiences and experiments for the benefit of the wider community. So Indian engineering was not a poorer version of the more glorified Western technologies. Concrete construction and building technology, as Fivez argued through the case of the Belgian Congo, were “gravely transformed through transnational confrontations” even though the authorship of these changes is not always clear in a context of strongly “imbalanced power relations”.69

  • 70 Andrew Feenberg, “Modernity, Technology and the Forms of Rationality,” op. cit. (note 66), p. 867.

28The modes of concrete construction also problematize the idea of standardization and rationality that historiographically underpin discourses of technology more generally, but also colonial architecture more specifically. Technologies appear as configured solutions to known problems, be they of the chemical properties of materials or how to deal with a riverbed that cannot be seen. Yet, as the examples of water infrastructures suggest, the engineers were dealing constantly with unknowns, and were improvising building processes based on fragments of ideas and approaches from global and local sites. While the broad trajectory of architectural developments was moving towards greater standardization in South Asian built environments, the production of works suggests a considerable degree of what Feenberg describes as “common sense, or informal rationality” at play.70 By foregrounding the technical choices together with the “personal element”, i.e. the voices, intentions, and agendas of engineers themselves, the narrative of colonial engineering is no longer one of technocratic competence alone, but one where building technologies are meshed within and shaped by a multitude of local and global factors.

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was carried out with the support of a grant received by Gauri Bharat from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for the project titled Modernization Before the Modernists: The Rise of Concrete in Early Twentieth Century India (2019). The authors are deeply grateful to the editors of this special issue, particularly Robby Fivez and Monika Motylińska, for their close reading of the paper and their suggestions, and to the peer reviewers and the ABE journal editorial team for their comments in the workshop.

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Notes

1 George Walter Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India: Being an Account of the Public Works in that Country from the Earliest Times Up to the Present Day, Westminster: A. Constable, 1894, p. 1-2.

2 Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastav, India, London: Reaktion Books, 2015 (Modern Architectures in History), p. 71.

3 Peter Scriver, The Scaffolding of Empire, Adelaide: Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture, the University of Adelaide, 2007, p. 8.

4 Sandes, who authored a volume on the history of military engineers in India, described for example some of the errors in irrigation projects. He wrote: “They gave too steep a slope to the channels so that rapids formed and threatened to destroy the masonry works. Their alignments were not the best. Some areas were given too much water, whilst others were starved. The natural drainage of the country was often obstructed to such an extent that water-logging occurred, bringing to the surface a salt (reh) which destroyed the crops, and causing malarial swamps. The same evils were even more marked in the Eastern Jumna Canal, which, starting from the Jumna opposite the head of the Western Canal, tails into the river at Delhi. After this canal was opened in 1830, an extensive realignment was necessary to enable it to work, in addition to the introduction of masonry falls at intervals to reduce the slope.” Edward Sandes, The Military Engineer in India, London: The Institution of Royal Engineers, 1935, vol. 2, p. 4.

5 Headrick notes that irrigation is unusual among technologies in that it was developed in colonies and transferred from one colony to another by the colonizers themselves. Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940, Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 196.

6 Edward Sandes, The Military Engineer in India, op. cit. (note 4), p. 7.

7 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 20-21.

8 James Walker and William Parkes, Kurrachee Harbour: Second Report of J. Walker; and Report of the Survey of 1857-58, Bombay: Education Society Press, 1858, p. 2-7.

9 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 33.

10 Ibid., p. 75-76.

11 John Summerson, “What is the History of Construction?” Construction History, vol. 1, 1985, p. 1. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41613599. Accessed 24 July 2024.

12 Silke Kapp, Katie Lloyd Thomas, João Marcos de Almeida Lopes, “Introduction: How to Look at Architecture from ‘Below’,” in Sérgio Ferro, “Concrete as Weapon,” Harvard Design Magazine, no. 46, 2018, p. ii. URL: http://www.mom.arq.ufmg.br/mom/01_biblioteca/arquivos/kapp_18_how_look.pdf. Accessed 8 August 2024.

13 Alan Moncrieff, Handbook and Directory of the Concrete Industry in India, Bombay: Concrete Association of India, p. 1.

14 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 6-7.

15 David Arnold, “Europe, Technology, and Colonialism in the 20th Century,” History and Technology, vol. 21, 2005, p. 86-88.

16 Vikram Bhatt and Peter Scriver, After the Masters: Contemporary Indian Architecture, Ahmedabad: Mapin, 1990.

17 David Arnold, “Europe, Technology, and Colonialism in the 20th Century,” op. cit. (note 15), p. 87.

18 Ibid., p. 99.

19 Tim Ingold, Making Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London: Routledge, 2013, p. 298-99.

20 William Henry Price, “The Manora Breakwater, Kurrachee,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, no. 43, 1876, p. 4-6.

21 W. H. Price, “Concrete Blocks for Manora Breakwater,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, vol. 2, 1874, p. 398-399.

22 “The Manufacture of Portland Cement,” The Manufacturer and Builder, 1877, p. 32.

23 See for instance, Julius George Medley, The Roorkee Treatise on Civil Engineering in India, vol. 1, Roorkee: Thomason College Press, 1869, p. 78-121.

24 Samuel Fitzhugh Cox, “Use of Concrete in India,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, vol. 5, 1876, p. 24-35, p. 30.

25 The exchange between South Asia and British and European examples of detailed technical information regarding concrete mixes specifically in harbor works is evident in reports and discussions published in the volumes of the Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, which was an important repository of engineering practices in South Asia.

26 W. H. Price, “Concrete Blocks for Manora Breakwater,” op. cit. (note 21), p. 399.

27 W. H. Price, “Portland Cement at Kurrachee,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, 1873, p. 326.

28 Price published the details of these comparative experiments and the results for the benefit of other engineers since all Portland cement at this time was imported and thus, subject to similar changes. Ibid., p. 324-325.

29 Ibid., p. 325.

30 This experimentation went on for a considerable period before a fixed block-casting process could be established. Towards the end of the project, the cost of the blocks was around 15 shillings per cubic yard. However, in the earlier stages, when more cement was used in the mix, the cost was much higher. See Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine, Engineering Structures, 1876, p. 567.

31 Dobson noted that this was the “ordinary method” for using beton on the European continent. A key difference between his description and the process at Karachi is that European engineers mixed a thick layer of beton and pieces of stone laid on it sank into the beton layer and eventually got mixed. In Karachi, the quarry lumps were placed, and the concrete mix packed around it. E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, London: John Weale, 1850, p. 44.

32 William Henry Price, “Concrete Blocks for Manora Breakwater,” op. cit. (note 21), p. 401.

33 Sérgio Ferro, Concrete as Weapon, op. cit. (note 12), p. 19.

34 Fitzhugh Cox, Use of Concrete in India, op. cit. (note 24), p. 24.

35 William John Bird Clerke, Impounding-reservoirs in India, and the Design of Masonry Dams: The Tansa Works for the Water-supply of Bombay, London: The Institution, 1894, p. 8.

36 Public Works Department, Papers relating to Water Supply Schemes in India, Madras: The Superintendent of Government Printing, 1889, p. 76.

37 Archibald Thomas Mackenzie, History of the Periyar Project, Madras: The Superintendent of Government Printing, 1899, p. 9.

38 Ibid., p. 9.

39 Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, Harbours and Docks: Their Physical Features, History, Construction, Equipment, and Maintenance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885, p. 121.

40 Ibid., p. 121.

41 J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, no. 87, 1887, p. 161. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1680/imotp.1887.21297.

42 Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, Harbours and Docks, op. cit. (note 39), p. 141-142.

43 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 70.

44 Imrie Bell, “On Sinking Wells for the Foundations of the Piers of the Jumna Bridge, Delhi Railway,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. 28, 1869, p. 325.

45 Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850-1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 136.

46 Brick bats are smaller pieces of brick, either broken or made by placing a thin layer of clay, which is then fired in the same way as bricks. This layer is broken up to produce small pieces.

47 Edward Davidson, The Railways of India: With an Account of Their Rise, Progress, and Construction, London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1868, p. 189.

48 G. W. Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India, op. cit. (note 1), p. 383-384.

49 Ibid., p. 385.

50 A cofferdam was a structure built below water to create an enclosed area from which water could be pumped out in order to facilitate the next steps of construction. For a detailed discussion on cofferdams for underwater foundations, see E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, op. cit. (note 31), p. 105-126.

51 In a published discussion around the use of concrete in the construction of docks, engineers used the term “bag system” or “bag concrete” synonymously. J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” op. cit. (note 41).

52 Ibid., p. 145.

53 E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, op. cit. (note 31), p. 51-52. The author distinguishes between beton as hydraulic concrete and other concretes, which were made of lime, as unfit for use in conditions involving water.

54 J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” op. cit. (note 41), p. 167-168.

55 Ibid., p. 150.

56 Julius George Medley, The Roorkee Treatise on Civil Engineering in India, vol. 2, Roorkee: Thomason College Press, 1877, p. 105-06.

57 E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, op. cit. (note 31), p. 105.

58 A.T. Mackenzie, History of the Periyar Project, op. cit. (note 37), p. 61-63.

59 Stoney, The New Chatravati Bridge, 1891, p. 19.

60 G. W. Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India, op. cit. (note 1), p. 96-104.

61 G. W. Macgeorge, Ways and Works in India, op. cit. (note 1), p. 386-387.

62 Patrick Doyle, “The Nerbudda Bridge at Broach,” Indian Engineering, vol. 26, 1899, p.  362.

63 For a detailed discussion on types of caissons and the circumstances in which they may be used, see E. A. Dobson, Rudimentary Treatise on Foundations and Concrete Works, op. cit. (note 31), p. 93-105.

64 J. Coode [et al.], “Discussion on Concrete-Work for Harbours,” op. cit. (note 41), p. 142-143.

65 Peter Scriver, “Imperial Progress: On the Impracticality of Problem-Solving in Colonial Indian Building,” Fabrications, vol. 11, 2001, p. 27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2001.10525151.

66 Andrew Feenberg, “Modernity, Technology and the Forms of Rationality,” Philosophy Compass, vol. 6, no. 12, 2011, p. 868. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00456.x.

67 Peter Scriver, The Scaffolding of Empire, op. cit. (note 3), p. 10.

68 Daniel R. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress, op. cit. (note 5), p. 9.

69 Robby Fivez, A Concrete State: Constructing Materials and Building Ambitions in the (Belgian) Congo, PhD dissertation, Ghent University, 2023, p. 16.

70 Andrew Feenberg, “Modernity, Technology and the Forms of Rationality,” op. cit. (note 66), p. 867.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Side elevation and end-view of Manora breakwater construction with divers setting the blocks on rubble masonry.
Crédits Source: “The Manora Breakwater, Kurrachee,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, no. 43, 1876.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16087/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,2M
Titre Figure 2: Published report comparing the weight and volume and cement before and after the sea voyage from Britain to Karachi.
Crédits Source: William Henry Price, “Portland Cement at Kurrachee,” Professional Papers on Indian Engineering, 1873.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16087/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 931k
Titre Figure 3: Projects that improved on the rubble mound block superstructure method of building breakwaters as employed for Manora in Karachi.
Crédits Source: “Sloping-Block System for Superstructures,” Harbour and Docks: Their Physical Features, History, Construction, Equipment, and Maintenance, 1885.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16087/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 679k
Titre Figure 4: Sketch showing the “native jham,” or tool used by traditional Indian well-diggers above, and below, the larger sized and relatively mechanized jham developed by colonial engineers.
Crédits Source: Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. 28, Session 1868-69.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16087/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 548k
Titre Figure 5: Drawing and image of Attock bridge, originally published in Engineering illustrating the rocky base that posed a challenge for laying foundations.
Crédits Source: “The Attock Bridge,” Scientific American, Supplement no. 470, 1885.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16087/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 708k
Titre Figure 6: Towards the center of the drawing of the dam across the Periyar River, we see “pier breached in February 1890,” stabilized using “sand bag bank.”
Crédits Source: A.T. Mackenzie, History of the Periyar Project, Madras: The Superintendent of Government Printing, 1899.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16087/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 606k
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Gauri Bharat et Bhavya Jain, « Becoming Concrete: Materiality and Water Infrastructure in Colonial South Asia »ABE Journal [En ligne], 23 | 2024, mis en ligne le 24 septembre 2024, consulté le 20 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/16087 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12ebj

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Auteurs

Gauri Bharat

Senior Associate Professor, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3461-9269

Bhavya Jain

Master Student in Design Studies, Harvard GSD, Cambridge, USA ORCID ID: 0009-0002-3144-4643

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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