ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire introduces readers to important new research in the field of science and empire. This compilation of inquiry into the inextricably intertwined history of science and empire reframes the field, showing that one could not have grown without the other.

The volume expands the history of science through careful attention to connections, exchanges, and networks beyond the scientific institutions of Europe and the United States. These 27 original essays by established scholars and new talent examine: scientific and imperial disciplines, networks of science, scientific practice within empires, and decolonised science. The chapters cover a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology and psychiatry to biology and geology. There is global coverage, with essays about China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, India, the Middle East, Russia, the Arctic, and North and South America. Specialised essays cover Jesuit science, natural history collecting, energy systems, and science in UNESCO.

With authoritative chapters by leading scholars, this is a guiding resource for all scholars of empire and science. Free of jargon and with clearly written essays, the handbook is a valuable path to further inquiry for any student of the history of science and empire.

chapter 1|9 pages

Introduction

An imperial turn in the history of science

chapter 4|12 pages

Racial science

chapter 5|12 pages

Meteorology and empire

chapter 6|11 pages

Colonial psychiatry

chapter 7|10 pages

Anthropology and empire

chapter 10|10 pages

Energy and empire

chapter 13|10 pages

Between transimperial networking and national antagonism

German scientists in the British Empire during the long nineteenth century

chapter 16|12 pages

Another empire

Science in the Ottoman lands

chapter 18|13 pages

Scientific knowledge in the Qing Empire

Engaging with the world, 1644–1911

chapter 21|10 pages

From history of science to history of knowledge?

Themes and perspectives in colonial Australasia

chapter 22|15 pages

Empires and science

The case of the sixteenth-century Iberian Empire

chapter 23|11 pages

Science in early North America

chapter 25|11 pages

Arctic science