Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India

Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India
Author: David Arnold
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2000-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521563192

Interest in the science, technology and medicine of India under British rule has grown in recent years and has played an ever-increasing part in the reinterpretation of modern South Asian history. Spanning the period from the establishment of East India Company rule through to Independence, David Arnold's wide-ranging and analytical survey demonstrates the importance of examining the role of science, technology and medicine in conjunction with the development of the British engagement in India and in the formation of Indian responses to western intervention. One of the first works to analyse the colonial era as a whole from the perspective of science, the book investigates the relationship between Indian and western science, the nature of science, technology and medicine under the Company, the creation of state-scientific services, 'imperial science' and the rise of an Indian scientific community, the impact of scientific and medical research and the dilemmas of nationalist science.

Science and the Raj, 1857-1905

Science and the Raj, 1857-1905
Author: Deepak Kumar
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN:

This book explores the links between science, technology and the process of colonization in the context of Victorian India. It begins with a study of the concept of colonial science and then moves on to early exploratory activities in this area; problems in science administration; science education; scientific researches; and Indian responses to all these activities. Colonial scientists had a dual mandate - to serve the state and to serve science. But as the colonial arteries hardened, science became a form of official knowledge, with official hierarchies and rituals. The evolution and progress of colonial science in India reveal a pattern which can be discerned. Science had an ideology, a string of institutions, and a set of committed people to serve very specific colonial ends. The questions asked are: what were the colonial postures in science? To what extent were scientific knowledge and discourses used to achieve political and cultural goals? How did the recipient culture appropriate or redefine the metropolitan ideology of science?