Becoming Concrete: Materiality and Water Infrastructure in Colonial South Asia

Since the mid-19th century, engineers in colonial South Asia experimented with concrete in building and infrastructural projects as the production of new infrastructures was leading to the genesis of the modern construction industry. In this paper, we analyse the use of concrete in water infrastructures amidst challenges posed by introducing any structure in and under water. For example, piers on the beds of fast flowing rivers altered the behaviour of both the water flow and water beds, which in turn affected the structure itself. In dealing with these uncertainties, the use of concrete vastly varied, unlike the relatively standardized practice today. Through a granular analysis of the construction of infrastructural projects like breakwaters and bridge foundations, from the late 19th to the turn of the 20th century, we analyse how concrete was locally improvized within the constraints of unfamiliar material, hydrological, topographical, and labour contexts in each site. We argue that the basic attributes of concrete technology, from chemical processes to construction processes and structural behaviour, themselves emerged as constraints and the builders resorted to alternative strategies and courses of action in each circumstance. The constant improvisations complicate the narrative of colonial technological circulation between the colonies and the West. We conclude that the material particularities of concrete made its translation across South Asian building projects improvisational, diverse, and localized.