SOCIAL SCIENCE AND IMPERIAL PROJECTS Professor Martin Thomas Professor of History, University of Exeter; ISRF Mid-Career Fellow 2015-16
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t might seem unsurprising that Western imperialists, their governments and supporters harnessed science and technology to advance the cause of empire. The means by which they did so are increasingly analyzed by historians through the prism of globalization, which frames the mechanics of scientific advancement in the context of transnational networks, the migration – voluntary or forced – of people, and the diffusion of knowledge as new technologies proliferated worldwide. At a more practical, but no less significant level, certain scientific achievements, from tin canning to viral prophylaxis, from steam ships to machine guns, have been singled out as particularly crucial to empire-builders, especially in the long nineteenth century of so-called ‘high imperialism’, which ended in 1914. It is perhaps more unsettling to remind ourselves that social science, too, became integral to Western imperial projects. More than that, certain branches of the social sciences were, from their inception, deeply implicated in colonialism. Sometimes they offered academic validation for it. At other times leading social scientists worked directly with state authorities to contain or even repress anti-colonial opposition within particular territories. In this context, the social scientific villains of the piece have typically been identified as firstgeneration social anthropologists, ethnographers, and, latterly, select groups of social psychologists. They are variously accused of first developing, then applying, ideas of scientific racism to colonial subject peoples and of pathologizing manifestations of anti-colonial protest as evidence of mental disorder or collective psychosis. This article offers a few snapshots of these processes at work. 13
