All Intensive Purposes

Had he been around today, Sir Frederick Upcott would be having a bad case of indigestion. When Jamsetji Tata, founder of the Tata Group, first proposed making steel girders for the British-run Indian railways, in 1907, the colonial administrator scoffed at the very idea. "Do you mean to say that Tatas propose to make steel rails toBritish specifications?" he asked. "Why, I will undertake to eat every pound of steel rail they succeed in making." This week, exactly a century later, the Tatas paid £6.7bn to buy Corus and with it the remnants of British Steel.

Jo Johnson, "India's steely drive is overcoming jaded colonial attitudes," Financial Times 7 (Feb. 3 2007).