ABSTRACT
The modern categories of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ first found their footing within nineteenth-century Europe and America. During this period science underwent significant transformations in standardisation, professionalisation, and commercialization. Religion also underwent significant transformations in liberalisation, pluralisation, and privatisation. At the same time, the nineteenth century witnessed the pinnacle of European imperialism. Whilst over the last five decades scholars of ‘science and religion’ have been engaged in complicating and dispelling the notion of ‘conflict’ that emerged as a thesis in the late nineteenth century, historians of science have been engaged in exploring and exposing the entangled nature of modern science as a critical component of Western imperial expansion. Yet despite their similar historical trajectories, these two areas of scholarship have mostly functioned in parallel with little overlap. This chapter, therefore, seeks to analyse the nascent ‘global turn’ in science and religion scholarship by charting the colonial intersections embedded in the historiography of science and religion. Fundamentally, we argue that the binary of science and religion is an inadequate framework for moving the field towards globality and that insights from empire are necessary. Situated primarily through a British imperial context, the core of the chapter centres around key geographical, linguistic, and material cultural case studies from across British India and Africa, which draw out the often sequestered colonial underpinnings of science–religion interactions. The chapter is then brought to a conclusion through a discussion on the future of historical scholarship on science and religion as it relates to empire with a particular focus on questions related to public engagement and material culture.
