Abstract
Despite the recent growth in studies of the history of science, medicine, technology, and environment relating to the non-European world, most accounts of the rise of the British Empire in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries contain few, if any, references to these new disciplinary approaches.1 There is extensive discussion about the changing nature of the English East India Company as it morphed from being an essentially commercial enterprise to an extensive territorial power, and there has been wide-ranging consideration of the changing patterns of trade and political relations between Britain and the local “country powers.” But there is scant acknowledgment of the role of science in this seminal episode in the making of modern empire—whether as a means by which British power was materially enhanced relative to that of Indian and European adversaries or as a means by which the British attained a new confidence in the beneficial nature and transformative effects of their rule. Part of the purpose of this chapter is, then, to suggest ways in which the history of science (broadly understood) might be foregrounded in relation to this moment of imperial arrival and to evaluate both its empirical and ideological role in the process of empire building in India.
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Arnold, D. (2013). Science and the Colonial War-State: British India, 1790–1820. In: Boomgaard, P. (eds) Empire and Science in the Making. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334022_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334022_2
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