Imperial steam : modernity on the sea route to India, 1837-74 /Jonathan Stafford.

"Marrying technological innovation with the workings of Britain's expanding Eastern empire, P&O's steamships provived a ready spectacle for the Victorian public imagination and a vantage point - both literal and literary - from which to view and encounter the imperial world. The steamship's modernity installed in its passengers not only a hubristic sense of identification with the British Empire, but also had significant corollaries for the perceptions of empire for those in the metropole. Imperial steam thus contributes to our understanding of the role of imperial networks in the production of the British imperial world view."