Science in the Service of Empire

Science in the Service of Empire
Author: John Gascoigne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1998-06-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521550697

Joseph Banks is one of the most significant figures of the English Enlightenment. This book places his work in promoting 'imperial science', in the context of the consolidation of the British State during a time of extraordinary upheaval. The American, French and Industrial Revolutions unleashed intense and dramatic change, placing growing pressure on the British state and increasing its need for expert advice on scientific matters. This was largely provided by Banks, who used his personal networks and systems of patronage to integrate scientific concerns with the complex machinery of government. In this book, originally published in 1998, Gascoigne skilfully draws out the rich detail of Banks' life within the broader political framework, and shows how imperial concerns prompted interest in the possible uses of science for economic and strategic gain. This is an important examination of the British State during a time of change and upheaval.

The Science of Empire

The Science of Empire
Author: Zaheer Baber
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 1996-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780791429204

Investigates the complex social processes involved in the introduction and institutionalization of Western science in colonial India.

Practical Matter

Practical Matter
Author: Margaret C. Jacob
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0674039033

Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart examine the profound transformation that began in 1687. From the year when Newton published his Principia to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, science gradually became central to Western thought and economic development. The book aims at a general audience and examines how, despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained acceptance and practical application. By the mid-eighteenth century the new science had achieved ascendancy, and the race was on to apply Newtonian mechanics to industry and manufacturing. They end the story with the temple to scientific and technological progress that was the Crystal Palace exhibition. Choosing their examples carefully, Jacob and Stewart show that there was nothing preordained or inevitable about the centrality awarded to science. "It is easy to forget that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture."

The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire

The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire
Author: Andrew Goss
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2021-07-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1000404854

The focus of this volume is the history of imperial science between 1600 and 1960, although some essays reach back prior to 1600 and the section about decolonization includes post-1960 material. Each contributed chapter, written by an expert in the field, provides an analytical review essay of the field, while also providing an overview of the topic. There is now a rich literature developed by historians of science as well as scholars of empire demonstrating the numerous ways science and empire grew together, especially between 1600 and 1960.

Science for the Empire

Science for the Empire
Author: Hiromi Mizuno
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2008-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804769842

This fascinating study examines the discourse of science in Japan from the 1920s to the 1940s in relation to nationalism and imperialism. How did Japan, with Shinto creation mythology at the absolute core of its national identity, come to promote the advancement of science and technology? Using what logic did wartime Japanese embrace both the rationality that denied and the nationalism that promoted this mythology? Focusing on three groups of science promoters—technocrats, Marxists, and popular science proponents—this work demonstrates how each group made sense of apparent contradictions by articulating its politics through different definitions of science and visions of a scientific Japan. The contested, complex political endeavor of talking about and promoting science produced what the author calls "scientific nationalism," a powerful current of nationalism that has been overlooked by scholars of Japan, nationalism, and modernity.

German Science in the Age of Empire

German Science in the Age of Empire
Author: Moritz von Brescius
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2018
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1108427324

A path-breaking study of national, imperial and indigenous interests at stake in a controversial German expedition to British India.

Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire

Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire
Author: Sarah Irving
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2015-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317315227

Represents a history of the British Empire that takes account of the sense of empire as intellectual as well as geographic dominion: the historiography of the British Empire, with its preoccupation of empire as geographically unchallenged sovereignty, overlooks the idea of empire as intellectual dominion.

Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire

Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire
Author: David G. Wittner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016-03-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317444361

Science, technology, and medicine all contributed to the emerging modern Japanese empire and conditioned key elements of post-war development. As the only emerging non-Western country that was a colonial power in its own right, Japan utilized these fields not only to define itself as racially different from other Asian countries and thus justify its imperialist activities, but also to position itself within the civilized and enlightened world with the advantages of modern science, technologies, and medicine. This book explores the ways in which scientists, engineers and physicians worked directly and indirectly to support the creation of a new Japanese empire, focussing on the eve of World War I and linking their efforts to later post-war developments. By claiming status as a modern, internationally-engaged country, the Japanese government was faced with having to control pathogens that might otherwise not have threatened the nation. Through the use of traditional and innovative techniques, this volume shows how the government was able to fulfil the state’s responsibility to protect society to varying degrees. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Nature and the Godly Empire

Nature and the Godly Empire
Author: Sujit Sivasundaram
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2005-11-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521848367

A study of the relations between nineteenth-century science and Christianity.

Science and Empire in the Atlantic World

Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
Author: James Delbourgo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2008-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135899096

Science and Empire in the Atlantic World is the first book in the growing field of Atlantic Studies to examine the production of scientific knowledge in the Atlantic world from a comparative and international perspective. Rather than focusing on a specific scientific field or single national context, this collection captures the multiplicity of practices, people, languages, and agendas that characterized the traffic in knowledge around the Atlantic world, linking this knowledge to the social processes fundamental to colonialism, such as travel, trade, ethnography, and slavery.