Study Abroad: Habsburg Railway Engineers in America

• In Event: Technology, Empire, and Internationalism in Eastern Europe

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, railways expanded across the globe and changed how countries, businesses, and ordinary people conceptualized transportation—the Habsburg Empire was no different. The proliferation of railways within the monarchy, however, required a significant transfer of material and knowledge in the 1830s and 1840s. While engineering schools such as the Prague Polytechnical Institute existed in the Habsburg Empire, the majority of railway engineering knowledge was gained through in person experience and peer to peer dialogue and not through formal education. This paper examines how traveling Habsburg engineers facilitated the transfer of railway technology in the early and mid-nineteenth century, and how foreign railway businesses, particularly from the United States sought to gain a foothold in central and eastern Europe.

Author

• Henry Blood, New York U