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Science in a Colony: Concept and Contours

Deepak Kumar

in Science and the Raj: A Study of British India

As an extremely important historical process, colonization had wide-ranging effects on the polity, society, economy, etc. of a colony. Colonial science has often been considered as a dependent ... More

As an extremely important historical process, colonization had wide-ranging effects on the polity, society, economy, etc. of a colony. Colonial science has often been considered as a dependent science in which the curiosity-oriented research in pure science is heavily superseded by a more result-oriented research in applied science. However, this definition is grossly insufficient. Colonial science is inextricably linked with the whole fabric of colonialism. This chapter discusses the concept and contours of colonial science, focusing on models of colonial science, the metropolis, and imperialism and imperial science. It also examines the role and place of the ‘tools’ or technology and ‘pure’ science in the history of imperialism, and considers pre-colonial science in India.Less

Introduction: Science, fiction and the non-aligned world

Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee

in Final Frontiers: Science Fiction and Techno-Science in Non-Aligned India

The introduction surveys the central role accorded to certain ideas of techno-scientific development in Indian nationalist imagination. It then examines the recent trend of a ‘post-colonial turn’ in ... More

The introduction surveys the central role accorded to certain ideas of techno-scientific development in Indian nationalist imagination. It then examines the recent trend of a ‘post-colonial turn’ in both science studies and science-fiction scholarship and argues that this misses the opportunity to examine both science and science fiction in relation to global capitalism, colonialism and international opposition to these. By looking at the case of Indian science fiction written during the first decades of Indian independence, when the country took a leading role in the non-aligned movement, it suggests that such inter-related literary and political forms tried to chart alternative routes to dominant practices of modernization in the 20th-century.Less

Conclusions

Deepak Kumar

in Science and the Raj: A Study of British India

Britain exploited science as an instrument of colonization and control in India, a concept that they closely tied to the needs of the empire. In order to legitimize their own rule, however, the ... More

Britain exploited science as an instrument of colonization and control in India, a concept that they closely tied to the needs of the empire. In order to legitimize their own rule, however, the colonizers first had to delegitimize several pre-colonial structures and texts. Thus, they considered it necessary to condemn the immediate past: Indians were declared unscientific, superstitious and resistant to change. A paternalistic Raj that was caring yet dismissive gradually emerged. It laid claims to both superior musketry as well as superior knowledge based on the discourse of rationality and progress. This sense of superiority led the British to denounce whatever scientific knowledge the Indians possessed. Unlike Canada and Australia, Victorian India received what was clearly a low form of science education, administered under ‘controlled’ conditions. The colonizers discouraged fundamental research work. This has had long term consequences: technology has overtaken contemporary India, its educational institutions have been on a decline, and research for cutting-edge knowledge remains wanting.Less

The Impossible Colonial Science

Laurent Dubreuil

David Fieni (ed.)

in Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post) colonial Expression

This chapter looks at how colonial science proposes a horizontal organization while respecting the prerogatives of each discipline: nothing that is colonial is foreign to it. While awaiting its ... More

This chapter looks at how colonial science proposes a horizontal organization while respecting the prerogatives of each discipline: nothing that is colonial is foreign to it. While awaiting its potential failure, a field of study that is defined as “the description of so-called primitive peoples” may at least participate in the global intelligibility of the colony. Anthropology provides useful information about the governed individuals, in particular those who are “less civilized.” To this mass of empirical knowledge are added the more practical observations about the behavior of the colonized, as well as the facts brought back from expeditions (concerning geography, flora and fauna), and the history of conquests, among other things. Colonial science situates itself in this region.Less

Exploration and Encounter: The Early Phase

Deepak Kumar

in Science and the Raj: A Study of British India

The late eighteenth century was an exciting time for the colonizers, who wanted to gather the maximum possible information about India as well as its people and resources. A number of travelogues and ... More

The late eighteenth century was an exciting time for the colonizers, who wanted to gather the maximum possible information about India as well as its people and resources. A number of travelogues and tracts appeared, including those of John Capper, F. Buchanan, Hugh Murray, G. R. Wallace, M. Martin, R. Heber, J.M. Honigberger, and M. Jacquemont. These writers faithfully reported not only what was best in India's natural resources and technological traditions, but also what could be the most advantageous to their employers. This chapter examines how colonial science began in India, and how it gradually matured with the help of surveys, educational bodies, scientific societies, and interlocutors (both indigenous and foreign). The Scots and the Danes formed a substantial body of the early botanists and zoologists, followed by a second group of ‘scientists’ that included the early meteorologists, geologists, and astronomers. The surveyors were the forerunners of scientific exploration.Less

Ecological concepts of development? The case of colonial Zambia

Sven Speek

in Developing Africa: Concepts and practices in twentieth-century colonialism

The focus of the chapter is plant ecological and agro-ecological research in colonial Zambia (Northern Rhodesia), from the Great Depression to the beginning of the so called “Second Colonial ... More

The focus of the chapter is plant ecological and agro-ecological research in colonial Zambia (Northern Rhodesia), from the Great Depression to the beginning of the so called “Second Colonial Occupation”. Colonial ecological research contributed to and was structured by the narrative of an impending social and ecological breakdown of “native” subsistence communities triggered by the impact of colonialism: the unintended consequences of Pax Britannica, the introduction of a capitalist economy, the creation of reserves. Ecology held the promise of not only helping to come to grips with these complexities, but of serving as a science of planning, opening up the possibility of successfully steering a course between the Scylla of social and ecological breakdown and the Charybdis of stagnation and low productivity. Northern Rhodesia – then still a backwater to the Empire – consequently became one of the hot spots for the testing out of ecological research methods.Less

Developing ‘Portuguese Africa’ in late colonialism: confronting discourses1

Cláudia Castelo

in Developing Africa: Concepts and practices in twentieth-century colonialism

The chapter focuses on development discourses of the Estado Novo (1933-74) raised around Angola and Mozambique. In addition to being, politically and economically, the two most significant parts of ... More

The chapter focuses on development discourses of the Estado Novo (1933-74) raised around Angola and Mozambique. In addition to being, politically and economically, the two most significant parts of the Portuguese Empire, they also became white settlement colonies. This last characteristic held strong sway in the development model that the regime devised for those colonies. Although the chapter gives priority to the perspectives and strategies of the Portuguese state, it also presents the views of experts and scholars. It is based on political documents, such as governmental statements (namely of ministers of Colonies/ministers of Overseas Provinces and colonial officials), colonial legislation and Planos de Fomento (Development Plans); and on scientific surveys and reports, especially of the Junta de Investigações do Ultramar (Overseas Research Council).Less

Origin Stories about Segregationist Philanthropy

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard

in Waste of a White Skin

“Origin Stories about Segregationist Philanthropy” examines how the race for eugenics has been conflated with national scientific achievement in the study of South Africa as a modern nation. Thereby ... More

“Origin Stories about Segregationist Philanthropy” examines how the race for eugenics has been conflated with national scientific achievement in the study of South Africa as a modern nation. Thereby abetting the manufacture of white citizenship and transforming settlers into white people—as prophylaxis against travel writer Anthony Trollope’s 1877 prediction that South Africa would always be a “black man’s country.” While such South African exceptionalism is offered as a way of telling a particular domestic history, this erases South Africa’s imbrication in colonial science. A more thoroughgoing history of how foundations have marked blackness as the living standard of poverty in the process of industrialization is necessary. Thus, the chapter explains more about slavery and why African women’s production and reproduction must be spatially removed from what we understand as industrialization and, finally, why impoverished white people must come to stand in for the only opponents of class exploitation.Less

Evolutionary Modifications

Gowan Dawson

in Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America

This chapter explores how, in the wake of Darwin’s Origin of Species and the fossil remains of so-called “missing links” like the Archaeopteryx that soon after came to light, Cuvierian correlation ... More

This chapter explores how, in the wake of Darwin’s Origin of Species and the fossil remains of so-called “missing links” like the Archaeopteryx that soon after came to light, Cuvierian correlation faced a profound crisis. Rather than simply being eclipsed by evolution, however, it was often modified and adapted to the new scientific priorities of the post-Origin era. Darwin himself appropriated key elements of Cuvier’s law in his own law of correlated variability, denuding the original of its erstwhile anti-evolutionary potential. Owen too publicly disputed Cuvier’s views on the fixity of species, explaining functional adaptations as the result of a preordained law of evolution. Owen nevertheless still endeavoured to impose the Cuvier’s paleontological methods on obdurate colonial naturalists in Australia.Less

How Do Abject Bodies Respond?: Ethnographies of a Dispersed Empire

Chul Kim

in The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire

Imperial arts and sciences primitivized colonized subjects, making their abject bodies public and visible through the gaze, probing, and dissection of cameras, measuring devices, and surgical ... More

Imperial arts and sciences primitivized colonized subjects, making their abject bodies public and visible through the gaze, probing, and dissection of cameras, measuring devices, and surgical instruments. As loyal attendants of modern bio-power, Korean naturalist and realist literature came into existence simultaneously with imperial physical anthropology’s production of depraved bodies. This is why colonial Korean literature is fraught with representations of the underclass, criminals, the disabled, and the insane. South Korean literary historiography has tended to aestheticize these bodies for the purpose of shoring up anti-colonial nationalism in the post-Liberation era. How, then, might we recuperate the resistance of colonized bodies in reading colonial literature? How do these silent bodies respond to the camera, to the scientists' scalpels? How do they return the gaze of those who measure and probe? How do they emerge as subjects of resistance, transforming from the seen to the observer?Less

Trans-Species Colonial Fieldwork: Elephants as Instruments and Participants in Mid-Nineteenth-Century India

Julian Baker

in Conflict, Negotiation, and Coexistence: Rethinking Human–Elephant Relations in South Asia

Examining the role of elephants in the colonial fieldwork of geologist Valentine Ball and botanist Joseph Hooker in British India, this chapter asks us to consider elephants in histories of ... More

Examining the role of elephants in the colonial fieldwork of geologist Valentine Ball and botanist Joseph Hooker in British India, this chapter asks us to consider elephants in histories of scientific discovery not just as facilitating devices but also as contributing participants. The author demonstrates that elephants were not only vehicles of access, instruments of observation, and expedient symbols of authority, but also particular sentient beings treated as non-human staff. Concerns with trace and erasure in the historical record are raised as a challenge for writing ‘trans-species history’, but investigative persistence reveals that Ball and Hooker’s elephants may be understood as non-human subaltern actors with individuality and intentionality who played an integral role in scientific fieldwork.Less