Unexploited Assets: Imperial Imagination, Practical Limitations, and Marine Fisheries Research in East Africa, 1917–53

Abstract

Historical writing about international marine science and the ideology of ‘science for development’ has followed different trajectories and has rarely intersected.¹ Studies of marine science have focused on northern and southern oceans, while studies of British colonial science generally have favored agriculture, forestry, medicine, and anthropology. On the one hand, this historiographical division makes sense, because the scale and scope of twentieth-century marine research in tropical colonial areas such as the Indian Ocean paled in comparison to both land-based colonial sciences and marine research elsewhere. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that scholars have thus far neglected the intersections between these two fields, because the tropical seas of the empire held a great fascination for British scientists and officials. Twice during the first half of the twentieth century, Colonial Fisheries Advisers crafted comprehensive strategies for research on a global scale that emphasized tropical areas. John Oliver Borley, who served as part-time adviser from 1929 to 1937, did not live to see any serious results from his efforts. Charles Frederick Hickling, the full-time adviser from 1945 to 1961, did oversee the temporary establishment during the waning years of empire of a handful of marine and freshwater research stations around the globe.