In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Quest for Technical Knowledge: Bengal in the Nineteenth Century by Suvobrata Sarkar
  • Daniel R. Headrick (bio)
The Quest for Technical Knowledge: Bengal in the Nineteenth Century. By Suvobrata Sarkar. New Delhi: Manihar Publishers, 2012. Pp. 244. $17.91.

The diffusion of Western technology under British rule is one of the most important, yet neglected, topics in the history of India. One aspect of that topic is the introduction of Western devices and processes into India: the printing press, steam engine, telegraph, railroad, massive irrigation systems, and electrification, to name a few. These technologies were imported by the British as means of controlling India and exploiting its resources.

Another aspect is technical education, the schools and curricula that the British created to train the skilled personnel needed to staff the Public Works Department. Associated with that is the discrimination practiced by recruiting Indians only for subordinate jobs, reserving the higher engineering and administrative positions for Europeans.

A third, and very important, theme is the reaction of Indians to the new technologies. To what extent did Indians admire and demand these innovations? How did the alien technologies mesh with Indian technologies and customs? How did Indians view education in Western scientific and technical subjects? How did they react to the discriminatory policies associated with that education? And finally, to what extent did Indians engage in business enterprises that used the imported technologies?

These are the questions that Suvobrata Sarkar addresses in The Quest for Technical Knowledge. He concentrates on Bengal because it was the first region to be transformed under British rule and the richest and most valuable part of the subcontinent before the twentieth century. He also intended using Bengali periodicals as a source of information on Bengali reactions to the imported technologies. [End Page 412]

While the author's objectives are admirable, the execution is unfortunately marred by several serious flaws. Most of the periodicals that might have shed light on Bengali attitudes have unfortunately been destroyed or lost, or only scattered issues have been preserved. To supplement them, the author relies on the works of well-known Bengalis like the scientist Pramatha Nath Bose, on nineteenth-century British authors, and on the extensive literature on British rule in India.

A more insidious flaw is the lack of attention to chronology. By jumping around fromthe early nineteenth century to the Swadeshi movement of the first decade of the twentieth, Sarkar loses track of the evolution of Indian attitudes toward the British and toward their technologies. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Bengali press described the alien innovations with respect and admiration. Then, at mid-century, came Governor-General Dalhousie's push to modernize India with railways, telegraphs, and new rifles, provoking (some say) the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a connection that the author neglects, perhaps because it did not take place in Bengal. The late nineteenth century saw the founding of the Indian National Congress, which he mentions briefly in passing despite its relevance to the topic of technology transfer. And finally, the Swadeshi movement was very much about Indian economic independence through the development of indigenous modern enterprises. Though the evolution of technologies, government policies, and indigenous responses lies at the heart of India's history during the Raj, the author's narrative leaves it up to the reader to piece that history together.

Equally regrettable is his conflating Bengal and the rest of India. Though Bengal was the most important province, its trajectory departed from that of other provinces. The author points out that the incipient industrialization of Bengal in the early nineteenth century was snuffed out by the financial crisis of the 1850s. Yet he fails to discuss the reasons for the rise of Bombay as a financial and industrial center, eventually surpassing Calcutta, or the entrepreneurs from Bombay, especially Parsis, who initiated the industrialization of India, first in textiles and later in steel. Likewise, though he discusses the changing attitudes of Hindus toward engineering and technologies, he neglects to mention the attitudes of Muslims.

In short, this book contains more information on than understanding of the history of technology during the Raj. [End Page 413]

Daniel R. Headrick

Daniel R...

pdf

Share