Richard Hornsey, Imperial Engineers

Educational institutions, like most institutions, are so big and complex that normally their chroniclers are forced to make a series of focusing decisions.What time period to write about?Should the focus be on students, faculty, culture, or something else?The Royal Indian Engineering College, located at Coopers Hill, just west of London (and hereafter Coopers Hill) had a short enough life (35 years) and was a small enough school (1623 total graduates), that Richard Hornsey didn't have to make those choices: in Imperial Engineers, he is able to attempt a total history of the school.Coopers Hill was established in 1871 at the behest of the Secretary of State for India, as a college to train engineers in England for service in India.As the colonial government increased its public works programs (railroads and irrigation systems), several schemes to increase the number of engineers for the colonial service had not proven satisfactory.More broadly, the British system of producing engineers, based on apprenticeship, was proving inadequate.While Coopers Hill was designed to train engineers for India, Hornsey sees the school as the leading edge of formal classroom engineering education for Britain.But Coopers Hill was a

Ancient history · Engineering · History · Indian Economic and Social Development