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Scientific Advice for British India: Imperial Perceptions and Administrative Goals, 1898—1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Roy M. MacLeod
Affiliation:
History and Social Studies of Science University of Sussex

Extract

In recent years there has been a continuing effort to place the history of scientific activity in Europe firmly in the political, economic and social contexts in which ideas and institutions have developed. Hitherto, however, comparatively little attention has been paid to the development of scientific institutions in the European colonial empires, or to the role of scientific activity in the commercial exploitation, civil government, or political development of individual countries.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

This study was supported in part by a research grant from the Department of Education and Science. I am indebted to the following for their kind assistance: Dr R. J. Bingle, India Office Library, and the staff of the India Office Records Department; the Librarian of the Royal Society; the Librarian of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and Miss D. G. Keswani, Assistant Director, National Archives of India, New Delhi.

1 Perhaps the best available systematic discussion of these issues is that of Basalla, G., ‘The Spread of Western Science’, Science, 156 (1967), 612. An extremely interesting extension of this discussion is the subject of a thesis, currently in preparation by Michael Worboys, a postgraduate student in History and Social Studies of Science in the University of Sussex.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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3 The most famous example, of course, was the impact of Macaulay's reforms of the Indian Civil Service on the British Home Civil Service reforms of 18531854. The Civil Service Gazette, 2 July 1853, commented: ‘The introduction of competition, as a test of appointment to the Civil Service of India, was forced on the discussion of its application to the Civil Service at home.’ Cf. Emmeline Cohen: ‘both the Indian administrative service and the reformed Universities proved to be the training ground of the men who were later to bring about radical changes in the organisation of the British Civil Service.’Google Scholar

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8 The development of railways, public works and communications is perhaps among the most visible accomplishments of Western technology. Cf. for example Gorman, M., ‘Sir William O'Shaughnessy, Lord Dalhousie and the Establishment of the Telegraph System in India’, Technology and Culture, 12 (10 1971), 581601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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The economic penetration of India also had, of course, significant consequences for science. J. R. Green remarked uncontroversially in 1914: ‘The great attention which English botanists of the early part of the [19th] century had given to taxonomic questions and the problems of geographical botany was largely the outcome of the growth and expansion of the Colonical and Indian empire during those years. This expansion was so notable a feature of the time that it almost obsessed the minds of the scientific workers who saw strange flora opened to them, full of deep interest and presenting problems of the greatest importance, both botanical and geographical.’Google Scholar

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16 Compare the experiences of Major James Rennell, F.R.S.; Major-General Sir Andrew Scott Waugh (18101877) who led the Triangulation Survey; General Sir William Baker (1808–1881), who began public works systems, reorganized the Indian railways (with Sir R. M. Stephenson and George Turnbull) and who retired to England in 1861 as chief adviser to the Home Government on Indian engineering; and Capt. James Basevi son of the architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, who died in 1864 during experiments for the Royal Society designed to measure the force of gravity along the great meridional arc.Google Scholar

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Crowther, J. G., Statesmen of Science (London, 1965), p. 242. It would be interesting to explore these relations in other contemporary contexts.Google Scholar

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18 The careers of Lt.-Gen. Sir Richard Strachey (18171908), Bombay Engineers, and Lt.-Col. Alexander Strange (1818–1876), Madras Light Cavalry, are instructive. Both men were influential in the mid-century campaigns of the Royal Society and the British Association to secure Government recognition of science. After 35 years in India, Strachey (father of Lytton Strachey) returned to England in 1871 and afterwards became chief of the Meteorological Office in London and President of the Royal Geographical Society. Strange participated in the Trigonometrical Survey in India and returned to England in 1861 to become the Inspector of Scientific Instruments for the India Office. He became F.R.S. and F.R.A.S. in 1861 and served on the Council of the Geographical Society, 1861–62. In speaking of England,Google Scholar

Burn, W. L. comments with great justice. ‘What the country would have done without the services of naval and military officers, especially the Corps of Royal Engineers, it is difficult to imagine.’ The Age of Equipoise (London, 1964), p. 64. Burns' comment seems equally relevant to India.Google Scholar

19 An instructive parallel in the organization of scientific research might be drawn between British India and British Ireland during the 19th century. Cf., R. B. McDowell, The Irish Administration, 1801–1814 (London, 1964), Ch. VIII, esp. pp. 257–65.Google Scholar

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21 The Indian Geological Survey was created in 1854 and the Trigonometrical Survey took place in the 1860s. In the 1880s Forestry Officers were trained at the Royal Engineering College, Coopers Hill, under Dr W. Schlich, former Inspector General of Forestry, who included in his syllabus a trip to Germany for his students to acquire practical training under German forestry officers.Google Scholar

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22 By the late 1890s the scientific establishment in India was large enough to be aware of their disadvantages in relation to their administrative colleagues: ‘… the system at present adopted by the Indian Government of treating its scientific servants on a different principle from that adopted in other departments is not really conducive to the best interests of the State. The chief disadvantages under which scientific men now labour in India are want of promotion and of graded increases of salary throughout their service. Men of science are after all men, and are no more likely than others to work heartily without any hope of increased pay or advancement especially when they are reminded by the promotion and increased emoluments granted to those in other branches of the same state service of their own waterlogged condition.Google Scholar

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25 SirCharles, Bruce, The Broad Stone of Empire (London, 1910), p. 114.Google Scholar

26 Kew Papers, Despatch No. 72, 1898. Government of India, Department of Revenue and Agriculture to Lord Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, 22 December 1898.Google Scholar

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29 SirHenry, Lyons, The Royal Society 1660–1940 (Cambridge U.P., 1944).Google Scholar

30 In 1887, for example, when the Imperial Institute was created, the President of the Royal Society was made one of its governors. There was some tacit assumption that the post would carry some power to influence the Institute's destiny. Kew Papers, I.A.C., Thiselton-Dyer to Secretary, Royal Society, 18 January 1902.Google Scholar

31 Kew Papers, I.A.C., Thiselton-Dyer to Secretary, Royal Society, 18 January 1902.Google Scholar

32 Summary of the Administration of Lord Curzon of Kedleston in the Department of Agriculture and Revenue (Simla, 1905).Google Scholar

33 In March 1904 the cornerstone was laid of a research laboratory and herbarium provided by a benefaction of £20,000 from Mr Henry Phipps, the American millionaire who had toured India in 1902–03.Google Scholar

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35 Quoted in SirThomas, Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, 1898–1905 (London, 1906), p. 286.Google Scholar

36 Kew Papers, I.A.C., Curzon to Walpole, India Office, 4 09 1902; transmitted by Walpole to the Royal Society, 9 October 1902. Albert (later Sir Albert) Howard who came as the Imperial Economic Botanist was later described as one of ‘those Western scientists who were brought to India to fulfil Lord Curzon's ideal of serving the Indian communities.’ He took it for granted that ‘it was the function of the British Government in India to confer on the peoples of India all the advantages of Western scientific democracy.’Google Scholar

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39 The Devonshire proposals were not in substance acted upon in Britain until 1915, when the Advisory Council on Scientific and Industrial Research was created to serve many of the functions envisaged by Strange.Google Scholar

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49 In 1902 Thiselton-Dyer had also been appointed Botanical Adviser in the Colonial Office, making him analogous with Sir Patrick Manson, the Medical Officer. This new position gave him an authority far exceeding the boundaries of Kew and the Thames—governing, in fact, over 200 botanists in Asia, Africa and Australia and the West Indies, and directing the cultivation of plants over almost one fifth of the earth's surface. Cf. Bruce, op. cit., pp. 114–145.Google Scholar

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51 SirJohn, Eliot (18301908), Second Wrangler, St. John's College, Cambridge, 1869; F.R.S., 1895, Professor of Maths in India; appointed Meteorological Reporter in 1886 and Director-General of Indian Observatories in 1899–1903. Eliot was credited with organizing meteorological research on an Imperial basis.Google Scholar

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53 SirThomas, Holland (18681947), educated Royal College of Science and Owens College, Manchester. Appointed 1890 an Assistant Superintendent, Geological Survey of India; curator of Geological Museum and Laboratory and a part time lecturer in geology at Presidency College, Calcutta in 1903; promoted over the heads of several officers to succeed C. L. Griesbach as Director; reorganized the department, secured increased staff and pay and ordered comprehensive scientific and economic surveys of coal, manganese, petroleum. Revived annual Records of the Geological Survey of India and instituted quinquennial reviews of mineral production. Elected F.R.S. in 1904 and awarded K.C.I.E. in 1908; left India for the chair of geology at Manchester in 1909, following disagreements with the Government of India over staff and pay in his department. Under his directorship, the Geological Survey gained 'a position of prestige in India, both with Government and with the public from which it has never fallen back'; 1916–18, chairman of Indian Educational Commission and Indian Munitions Board; K.C.S.I., 1918; 1920–21 Viceroy's Executive Council; 1922–29, Rector, Imperial College, London; 1929–1944, Principal of Edinburgh University President of the British Association, 1929;Google Scholar

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129 Roy, MacLeod and Kay, Andrews, ‘The Committee of Civil Research: Scientific Advice for Economic Development, 1925–30’, Minerva, VII (1969), 680705.Google Scholar

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130 Nature, 121 (5 05 1928), 698700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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131 In 1929 the Royal Commission on Agriculture reported that ‘the transfer of agriculture to popular control had clogged the wheels of such machinery as previously existed for [guiding, promoting and coordinating agricultural and veterinary research] and… research on which all progress in developing agriculture must needs be based had suffered in consequence.’ Cf. N.A.I., ‘Establishment of a Central Council of Agricultural Research in India on the Recommendation of the Royal Commission on Agriculture’, Department of Education, Health and Lands, file 1–3, (March 1929), Reports and Minutes by Habibullah, M., 12 July 1928.Google Scholar

132 Official Report of the Legislative Assembly, Debates, 15 February 1926, p. 1174.Google Scholar

133 Ibid.

134 Reports of the Committee on the Organisation of Medical Research under the Government of India (Delhi, 1928).Google Scholar

135 MacLeod, R. M. and Andrews, E. K., ‘Scientific Careers of 1851 Exhibition Scholars’, Nature, 218 (1968), 1011–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

136 ‘Establishment of a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research’, Department of Health, Education and Lands, File 156–1/33G (19311933).Google Scholar

137 Ibid.

138 Ibid., Willingdon to Hoare, 14 May 1934.

139 Ibid.

140 Cf., Research Survey and Planning Organization, Science Policy in India (Occasional Paper Series No. 1, 1967).Google Scholar

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141 For a description of this phenomenon in terms of academic political science, see William, Hamilton (ed.), The Transfer of Institutions (Duke University, 1964).Google Scholar

142 Maheshwari, P., ‘Indian Scientific Policy’, Minerva, III (1964), 99113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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144 The expanding political role of the Royal Society in this period has received relatively little attention. Sir Henry Lyons' official history (The Royal Society) does not make much of the fact, although it is implicit in his discussion (especially Chs VIII–IX). Recent work on the Society's role in international relations during and after the First War is becoming more explicit. Brigitte, Cf. Schroeder-Gudehus, ‘Challenge to Transitional Loyalties: International Scientific Organisations after the First World War’, Science Studies, 3 (04, 1973), 93118.Google Scholar

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