1st Edition

Beyond Science and Empire Circulation of Knowledge in an Age of Global Empires, 1750–1945

212 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

212 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

212 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Through ten case studies by international specialists, this book investigates the circulation and production of scientific knowledge between 1750 and 1945 in the fields of agriculture, astronomy, botany, cartography, medicine, statistics, and zoology. In this period, most of the world was under some form of imperial control, while science emerged as a discrete field of activity. What was the... Read more

1. Science and Empire: Past and Present Questions

Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, Thomás A. S. Haddad, and Kapil Raj

Part 1: Knowledge Production on Imperial Landscapes

2. Putting Ships to New Uses: "Floating Gardens" and the Circulation of Knowledge at Sea and on Land, 1790-1800

Jordan Goodman

3. Regional Knowledge in the Empire: Tobacco Cultivation during the Napoleonic Era

Alexander van Wickeren

4. Global Communication and Construction of Knowledge in French Naval Medicine: Pierre-François Kéraudren and the Health Department of French Navy, 1813-1845

Daniel Dutra Coelho Braga

5. Positioning the North: Making British Geographical Knowledge of Australia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Johanna Skurnik

6. Maps and the Man on the Spot: Bio-geographies, Knowledge, and Authority around and about the Zambezi

Elizabeth Haines

7. The Global Dimensions of the Rome Zoological Garden and Italian Colonialism in Africa

Mauro Capocci and Daniele Cozzoli

Part 2: Knowledge Production at Imperial Crossroads

8. The Astronomical Observations of Bento Sanches Dorta in Rio de Janeiro, 1781-1787

Heloisa Meireles Gesteira

9. Auguste de Saint-Hilaire’s writings between European and Brazilian Audiences, 1816-1850

Lorelai Kury

10. Commercial Statistics of Late Qing China Between Global Interest and Local Irrelevance, 1860-1910

Stacie A. Kent

11. Plague and the Global Emergence of Microbiology, 1894-1920

Shiori Nosaka and Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva

Biography

Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, working on the global history of medicine. He is the author of Quand la peste connectait le monde: production et circulation de savoirs microbiologiques entre Brésil, Inde et France (1894–1922) (2020).

Thomás A. S. Haddad is an Associate Professor of History of Science at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, specializing on astral knowledge practices in early modern empires. He is the author of Maps of the Moon: Lunar Cartography from the Seventeenth Century to the Space Age (2019).

Kapil Raj is a Distinguished Research Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, whose research is focused on the role of intercultural encounters in the construction of modern science. He is the author of Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (2007).