We grow up with a simple narrative: roads began as footpaths. People walked the same routes repeatedly. Grass wore down. Eventually, someone paved it. Community need spawned infrastructure. Clean. Natural. Logical.
Here's what bothers me about that story: it's almost entirely wrong.
The real history of roads is messier, more deliberate, and far more revealing about how power actually works. When you understand where roads truly came from, you start seeing infrastructure differently. Not as neutral technology serving everyone equally, but as tools of control, wealth extraction, and domination.
The Uncomfortable Origin Story
Let's be direct. Organized road systems didn't emerge from villagers wanting easier access to the market. They emerged when powerful entities needed to move armies, goods, and resources efficiently across territory they controlled or wanted to control.
The earliest evidence points to military necessity. The Royal Road of ancient Persia, built around 500 BCE, wasn't constructed because merchants requested it. Darius I built it to maintain control over his vast empire, to move armies quickly, and to demonstrate power. The road stretched approximately 2,400 kilometers from Susa to Sardis. Not for the common person. For imperial reach.
But we don't need to look only at Persian empires. Consider India, where the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka constructed an elaborate network of roads around 250 BCE. These weren't casual pathways. The Arthashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on statecraft, explicitly describes road construction as a royal duty tied to military logistics and tax collection. Roads meant the king could send armies anywhere. Roads meant merchants paying duties couldn't hide. Roads meant power.
Rome Codified the Pattern
When we think of ancient roads, Rome dominates the mental landscape. And for good reason. The Romans didn't invent the concept, but they perfected it. They understood something profound: infrastructure equals dominion.
The Appian Way, constructed in 312 BCE, wasn't built because Romans were tired of walking. It connected Rome to its military supply routes and newly conquered territories. Later, as the empire expanded, road construction followed a deliberate pattern: conquer a region, build roads, lock in economic and military control. The Vias were engineering marvels, yes. But they were also chains. They allowed Rome to supply its armies hundreds of kilometers away. They allowed Rome to move legions faster than resistance could organize.
Here's something I wrestled with while researching this: were these roads also genuinely useful to ordinary people? Yes. Some trade happened. Some communication improved. But calling that the primary purpose misses the mechanism of power entirely. Secondary benefits don't define primary intention.
Medieval and Modern Echoes
Skip ahead to medieval Europe. Roads deteriorated after Rome fell. Why? Because centralized power fragmented. Without imperial necessity, road maintenance felt optional. Locals used paths when convenient. Nobody invested heavily.
Then came the Renaissance states and nation-building. Suddenly, roads mattered again. France's absolutist monarchy invested in road networks explicitly to strengthen royal authority and taxation. The network bound scattered regions into a unified economic system controlled from Paris. Same pattern, different era.
Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution. The turnpike system in Britain didn't emerge from pure community demand. It emerged because merchant classes and industrialists needed reliable routes for moving manufactured goods. They invested because profit required it. Communities benefited, certainly. But again, benefit was secondary to economic extraction.
What This Actually Reveals
Here's the insight that matters: infrastructure always encodes the values and power structures of whoever builds it. Always. This isn't cynicism. It's structural reality.
When we build a highway through a neighborhood, we're not neutral. We're making choices about which communities matter, where goods flow, who profits. When a country invests in rural roads, it's usually because centralized government wants to bring rural areas into its tax and control system. When corporations fund infrastructure in developing nations, they're not philanthropists. They're securing supply chains and markets.
The Romans weren't evil for understanding this. They were honest about it. Their roads were instruments of power, and they admitted it. They celebrated it. We've just wrapped the same mechanism in the language of "community service" and "progress."
Ancient India: Trade and Dynasty
India's road history complicates the purely military narrative, which is worth examining. The Mauryan Empire did build roads for army movement, but also because long-distance trade was already economically significant. The roads facilitated the spice trade, silk connections, and merchant networks.
Yet even here, the pattern holds. The roads weren't built randomly. They connected ports to capitals. They connected wealthy trading cities. They reinforced existing power hierarchies. Ashoka's famous pillars marked these routes. Not as friendly waystations, but as monuments to imperial presence and control. Trade happened, yes. But the infrastructure was designed by and for those who already held power.
What's interesting is how the Mauryan rulers were explicit about this in their governance texts. The Arthashastra doesn't pretend roads were gifts to the masses. It describes them as tools of statecraft. Honest about the function, even while benefiting merchants and travelers.
The Modern Misunderstanding
We've inherited a dangerous assumption: that infrastructure is naturally and inherently good. That more roads mean more freedom. That connectivity is always positive.
But roads are concentrated power made physical. They determine where capital flows. They determine which communities are included or excluded from economic networks. They determine whose culture gets replicated across space. A highway through a rural area isn't neutral access. It's often the vehicle for displacement, for consolidating agricultural land into corporate control, for extracting resources to distant cities.
I'm not arguing roads are bad. I'm arguing we should stop pretending they're innocent.
The Question Forward
If roads encode power, what does that mean for how we build them now? When we plan infrastructure, do we acknowledge who benefits and who bears the cost? Do we recognize that "progress" often means integrating resistant communities into systems that extract their resources?
The Chandra Sagar team thinks about these questions because infrastructure shapes possibility. It shapes how information flows, how resources move, how cultures connect or collide. Understanding that roads are tools of power, not neutral technology, changes how thoughtfully we can engage with the systems we inherit and build.
The Romans knew what they were doing. Maybe it's time we did too.
Infrastructure always encodes the values and power structures of whoever builds it. Always. Community benefits are rarely the primary driver.
