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Technology and Culture 42.1 (2001) 195-197



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Book Review

Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India


Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India. By David Arnold. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii+234. £35.

Science, technology, and medicine played a central role in the history of modern imperialism. This argument is now confirmed by the editors of The New Cambridge History of India, who have included David Arnold's exceptionally useful book in their prestigious series. Each section and chapter is richly documented with footnotes to primary sources and secondary works. Arnold has also included a helpful biographical index. These features will make Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India a point of embarkation for much future research.

Arnold surveys an impressive range of sources and advances an argument that is clear and subtle. He rejects George Basalla's thesis, advanced in "The Spread of Western Science" (Science, 5 May 1962), that the globalization of science occurred in three stages: first, Europeans explored the world; [End Page 195] second, they transplanted science to the rest of the world; third, countries outside of Europe took up European science as their own. To be sure, Basalla's thesis has already received extensive criticism, although he deserves credit for having initiated a stimulating debate. Since 1967, a number of historians and social scientists have shown the ways in which nonwestern peoples have shaped and contested Western knowledge and technologies. Indeed, the categories of "Western" and "nonwestern" have been shown to be problematic.

In the case of India, Arnold discusses the interactions between Indians and Britons, yet he is not willing to throw out Eurocentric diffusionism altogether. He shows that Indian science, technology, and medicine can only be understood in the context of British domination, and that scientists, doctors, and engineers brought Western and Indian ideas together to differing degrees. He also shows that some nationalist politicians, such as Nehru, assigned pride of place to Western science, technology, and medicine, while relegating indigenous notions to a secondary role. Other nationalist politicians, such as Gandhi, preferred indigenous methods. Some Indian scientists admired Hindu epistemology, too, and made controversial efforts to incorporate aspects of this within Western scientific methods. Indian doctors engaged in a running debate about the desirability of using traditional Ayurvedic drugs and methods.

Arnold traces the origins of these debates about syncretism to the era of the East India Company (1600-1858), when European astronomers, botanists, cartographers, geologists, and zoologists provided instrumental and ideological support for colonial domination. Scientific interaction with Indians was somewhat attenuated, even though there were "eclectic exchanges and syncretic interface between Western and Indian medicine" (p. 70) during the nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, significant numbers of Indians were receiving training in Western medicine, yet this was not a story of rational Western medicine simply triumphing over "superstitious" Indian practices. As Arnold demonstrates in the case of smallpox vaccinations, the new medicine needed the support of the colonial state, missionary organizations, and local elites, while doctors modified their practices to suit local environmental conditions. They also adapted to local ideas about religion and gender.

Arnold examines local debates about technology as well. Following Arnold Pacey, he argues that the transfer of technologies from Britain to India stimulated many local "dialogues." Older, pre-steam-power technologies were often used side by side with newer technologies. For example, even as British textiles were flooding the Indian market and destroying local hand-weaving businesses, some weavers improved their techniques and produced specialized goods. The British recognized the resilience of local technological traditions. Colonial authorities restricted mining and metallurgy out of the fear that locally made weapons might contribute to [End Page 196] anticolonial resistance. They paid the same backhanded compliment to Indian shipbuilders, by restricting the access of Indian-made ships to harbors. Even so, aspects of Indian design were incorporated in culturally hybrid ships. Local conditions shaped other "tools of empire," as in the case of railroads, which were constructed partly to relieve famine, partly to encourage the development of capitalist agriculture, and partly to repress rebellion...

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