Science and War at the Limit of Empire: William Griffith with the Army of the Indus

Abstract

In 1839, at the outset of the First Anglo-Afghan War, East India Company surgeon and naturalist William Griffith (1810–1845) set out for Afghanistan with the so-called ‘Army of the Indus’. That science, empire, and war were inextricably linked in the nineteenth century is widely acknowledged by scholars, as is the way that natural history collecting was dependent on military (and especially naval) infrastructure. However, the everyday practices and negotiations that underpinned collecting in the context of colonial warfare remain less well understood. Here, Griffith's scientific activities—especially the collection of plant and fish specimens—provide an instructive case, constantly circumscribed by his operating within an invading and then occupying army. Tensions frequently emerged between military and scientific objectives, as well as between Griffith and the numerous collectors and assistants he relied on within the army column and occupied territory (including a broker named Abdul Rozak, a series of fishermen, and a mullah at Kandahar). By making a close study of the relationship between military and scientific practice during the First Anglo-Afghan War (later remembered as one of the most notorious ‘disasters’ in the history of the British Empire), this article demonstrates the intimate linkages between imperial violence and knowledge production in this period. More broadly, an examination of Griffith's collecting practices reveals the way in which imperial geographical and environmental perceptions of Afghanistan were shaped and reified at a crucial moment in its history.