The South Manchuria and Baghdad Railways: Global Imperialism through Infrastructure in the Early Twentieth Century

This thesis examines the early twentieth-century shift in global imperialism through a comparative study of railway development in Manchuria and the Ottoman Empire. It argues that rising powers—Japan and Germany—challenged the existing Anglo-American imperial order by utilizing "informal empires" built on hybrid public-private enterprises, specifically the South Manchuria Railway and the Baghdad Railway Company. By drawing on diplomatic correspondence, official treaty frameworks, and newspaper coverages, this study illustrates how shared institutional logics of peaceful penetration reconfigured global power. These "infrastructural empires" employed indirect control through financial leverage and legal concessions rather than overt territorial conquest. Ultimately, this research reveals a continental network of imperialism that transcends narrow national narratives, repositioning it as an integrated, global structural phenomenon.