Science and Empire Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 1800-1970

by Bennett, Brett M. M.; Hodge, Joseph M. M.

• ISBN13: 9780230252288
• ISBN10: 0230252281
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This new survey of scientific endeavor within the British Empire is the most wide-ranging yet published, examining the interconnections between science, the British Empire, and the emergence of a globalized world. It identifies and analyzes the web of scientific networks crisscrossing the British Empire through which scientific knowledge and authority were produced, circulated and legitimated, critically engaging with new ways of thinking about networked connections across space. It offers a comparative perspective that surveys a variety of scientific initiatives and circuits, including networks of agronomists, anatomists, botanists, foresters, geologists, marine biologists, oceanographers and physicists. As they chart the evolving practices, strategies, theoretical ideas and agendas among research scientists, technical advisers, imperial administrators, and native peoples in Africa, Australia, Britain, India and elsewhere; each chapter combines rigorous research with theoretical reflection based on the latest literature, as well as serving as a useful introduction to that literature.

Author Biography

Brett M. Bennett is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He specializes in the environmental and scientific histories of British imperialism in the Indian Ocean region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His publications include articles in Itinerario, Environment and History, the International Review of Social History, the Journal of the History of Biology, and the British Scholar^ Journal. Joseph M Hodge is an Associate Professor of Modern British and, British Imperial history and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at West Virginia University, USA. He is author of Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (2007) and he has also published several articles in leading historical journals.

Table of Contents

Tables & Figures
Preface
Notes on Contributors
List of Abbreviations
PART I: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND OVERVIEW
Science and Empire: An Overview of the Historical Scholarship; J.M.Hodge
The Consolidation and Reconfiguration of 'British' Networks of Science, 1800-1970; B.M.Bennett
PART II: KNOWLEDGE AND NETWORKS IN THE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES
Science and the British Empire from its Beginning to 1850; J.Gascoigne
A Networked Approach to the Origins of Forestry Education in India, 1855-1885; B.M.Bennett
Anatomy of Reception: Science, Nation and Religion in Hindi-Language Print Media of Colonial South Asia; R.Tiwari
'A Science of Our Own': Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions, Australians and the History of Science; P.H.Hoffenberg
Between the Nation and the World: JT Wilson and Scientific Networks in the Early Twentieth-Century; T.Pietsch
PART III: KNOWLEDGE AND NETWORKS AT THE END OF EMPIRE
Albert Howard and the Decolonization of Science: From the Raj to Organic Farming; G.A.Barton
'The Chance to Send their First Class Men out to the Colonies': The Making of the Colonial Research Service; S. Clarke
The Hybridity of Colonial Knowledge: British Tropical Agricultural Science and African Farming Practices at the End of Empire; J.M.Hodge
The Science of Decolonization: The Retention of 'Environmental Authority' in the Contest for Antarctic Sovereignty between Britain, Argentina, and Chile, 1939-59; A.Howkins
Unexploited Assets: Imperial Imagination, Practical Limitations, and Marine Fisheries Research in East Africa, 1917-1953; C.Jennings
Thomas Adeoye Lambo and the Decolonization of Psychiatry in Nigeria; M.M.Heaton
The Reconfiguration of Scientific Career Networks in the Late Colonial Period: The Case of the Food and Agricultural Organization and the British Colonial Forestry Service; J.Gold
Epilogue; M.Worboys
Bibliography
Index