The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 by Daniel R. Headrick

Abstract

166 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940. By Daniel R. Headrick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp. x + 405; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $32.50 (cloth); $11.95 (paper). In an earlier book, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (1981), Daniel Headrick argued that Western technology not only facilitated colonial conquests but also motivated them. In the present volume he backs off a bit from his technological determinism and merely describes some instances of technology transfer from Europe (mainly Britain) to the colonies (mainly India). Although the aims and time spans of the two books are slightly different, they overlap to some extent. For example, Tools contains a twelve-page chapter on “The Railroads of India,” Tentacles a forty-eight-page chapter on “The Railways of India”; Tentacles has substantial chapters on “Ships and Shipping” and “The Imperial Te­ lecommunications Networks” (including wireless), whereas Tools has separate shorter chapters on steamships, shipping companies, and submarine cables (but not wireless). Topics treated in Tentacles that do not figure in Tools include “Cities, Sanitation, and Segregation” (case studies of Hong Kong, Calcutta, and Dakar), irrigation (“Hydraulic Imperialism”) in India and Egypt, “Economic Botany and Tropical Plantations,” mining and metallurgy, and technical education. Like Tools, Tentacles is based largely on published secondary works, with incidental reference to archival sources. Unfortunately, Headrick does not provide a comprehensive list of works cited; the brief “Bib­ liographical Essay” merely recapitulates the principal titles cited in the notes, whereas second and subsequent citations in the latter are referred to by the author’s name only. In some cases he cites reprints as “revised” or “second” editions. Headrick makes a useful distinction between the geographic relo­ cation of an element of technology (e.g., a railway in India, a sugar plantation in Java) and the cultural diffusion of modern technology in general. He then goes on to argue that the Europeans were suc­ cessful in the former, but failed in the latter. That involves the as­ sumption that Europeans either intended or should have intended to promote cultural diffusion, but he cites numerous instances that show the contrary. Although not explicit, many passages throughout the book indicate that he has made an implicit moralistic judgment that Europeans should have been more concerned with promoting the cultural diffusion of technology. While people of goodwill may agree that the world would be a better place today if they had been, it is scarcely the role of the historian to make such judgments. Moreover, it is by no means clear that even if they wished to do so the Europeans could have promoted diffusion more effectively than they did. Technological diffusion is an immensely complicated process involving dozens if not hundreds of variables, as the failure of many TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 167 well-intentioned programs in the last forty years has shown. In his concluding paragraph, Headrick speculates about “alternative pasts” (or, as economic historians say, counterfactual histories) of Europe’s colonies on the assumption that they had not been conquered. They might “have preserved their traditional ways for a few generations more, like China, Afghanistan, or Arabia; or they might have become modern and industrial, like Japan” (p. 384). Or they might have stag­ nated, economically and technologically, like most of Latin America, Thailand, and Ethiopia, with which Headrick might have compared them. India’s history since 1947 provides a clue. Rondo Cameron Dr. Cameron, Wm. Rand Kenan University Professor at Emory University, is vice president of the International Economic History Association. His book,/! Concise History of the Worldfrom Paleolithic Times to the Present, is published by Oxford University Press. The Stubborn Earth: American Agriculturalists on Chinese Soil, 1898—1937. By Randall E. Stross. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cal­ ifornia Press, 1986. Pp. xi + 272; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00. The Stubborn Earth is well organized, thoroughly researched, insight­ ful, and superbly written. The book is sufficiently comprehensive to provide the uninitiated reader a valuable perspective, and there is enough detail on individual characters and the China of their times to command the interest of specialists...