The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India by Zaheer Baber

Abstract

354 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE many of which are already in the public domain, it is worth asking whether anyone will be persuaded to pay the publisher’s exorbitant price. Daniel R. Headrick Dr. Headrick, professor of history and social science at Roosevelt University, is the author of The Tools ofEmpire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), The Tentacles ofProgress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism 1850-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 18511945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). He is currently working on the data revolution of the eighteenth century. The Science ofEmpire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India. By Zaheer Baber. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Pp. viii+298; notes, bibliography, index. $23.95 (paper). Despite the promising line of argument laid out in the introduc­ tion, this book is ultimately a rather disappointing study. At the out­ set of The Science ofEmpire, Zaheer Baber provides an engaging, if abbreviated, critique of the extreme constructivist approach to the history of science and technology taken by scholars such as Steve Woolgar and Malcolm Ashmore. Sensibly arguing for a reality that exists beyond our perception and representations, Baber proposes to contextualize the introduction and impact ofWestern science and technology in early modern and colonial India in several ways. First, he will trace the history of scientific investigation and discourse and technological innovation in precolonial India, which in turn will pro­ vide the basis for an exploration of these developments at various stages ofthe colonial era. For both precolonial and colonial periods, Baber stresses the importance of identifying the social, cultural, and political-economic factors that shaped the nature of scientific and related epistemologies and that spurred invention in numerous fields. With these patterns and interrelationships established, Baber pro­ poses both to examine the impact of existing scientific and techno­ logical systems on the introduction of their Western counterparts into India and to pursue a more familiar investigation of the ways in which colonial imperatives and the needs of the British metropolis shaped this process. One ofBaber’s main objectivesin exploring these linkages is to test the assumption that the process oftransfer ran only one way—from metropolis to colony—and was purely imitative. All of this is, of course, a rather tall order, especially for a slim volume of250 pages. Given these constrictions, each part ofthe proj­ ect necessarily becomes more of a synthesis of existing scholarship TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 355 on a wide range of topics than an original disquisition on different phases of Indian scientific and technological development. Though Baber’s command of the relevant secondary literature is credible, he often lapses into rather familiar summaries of earlier accounts of particular aspects of Indian scientific investigation or technological innovation. It is useful to have this information brought together in a single volume. But he often provides only fragmented and partial contextualizations of these major developments in thinking and ma­ terial culture. At his best, Baber has analytical purpose and a thor­ oughness that makes for cogency. But often his case histories are abbreviated and weakly contextualized. Once he reaches the British period, his line of argument largely duplicates more innovative and detailed recent studies. In important ways, Baber’s partially contextualized surveys of sci­ entific and technological developments over a huge span of Indian history undermine his broader theoretical agenda. Given substantial recent work on the transfer of Western science and technology to India in the colonial period, for example, his case studies and overall conclusions showing that this process was intimately linked to the enterprises of colonization are unremarkable. His promise to illus­ trate how indigenous scientific and technological traditions shaped colonial transfers is largely unfulfilled. In the face of his critical, even dismissive, remarks about the work of scholars who have explored Indian alternatives to the Western path to “development,” Baber’s cursory and highly selective treatment of the revivalist strains of In­ dian nationalism is puzzling. He provides one or two interesting ex­ amples of colonial India’s impact on European scientific and tech­ nological development but little...