Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism

3. Science for Development: The Expansion of Colonial Agricultural Research and Advisory Networks, 1914–35

CH A P T E R 3 Science for Development The Expansion of Colonial Agricultural Research and Advisory Networks, 1914–35 FROM THE FIRST BRITISH SHOTS fired on land, which were aimed at a German wireless station in West Africa, to the Paris Peace Conference where the Allied powers laid dibs on the former colonial possessions of Germany and Turkey, the First World War was never simply a European conflict, but a global war involving a collision of empires that would have long-term and ambiguous consequences for British world power.1 As Robert Holland notes, “It united and divided; it fuelled British solidarities , and denied emergent nationalities; it was driven by continental commitments , yet it reinforced a bias beyond Europe; it encouraged the liberty of reform, but accentuated the temptation of repression.”2 For the white dominions such as Australia and Canada, the war kindled a new self-consciousness that would lead in the decades that followed to a redefinition of the imperial partnership and a greater degree of autonomy. India’s contribution of more than a million recruits to serve overseas would also effect important changes in its imperial status, inspiring the Montagu Declaration of , which promised “responsible government” You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. as the future goal of Indian policy. At the same time, however, fears of increased terrorist activity and rumors of German-supported armed revolt provoked a list of repressive wartime and then postwar government controls that set off a wave of Indian resistance, and, in turn, a ruthless military crackdown that shook the foundations of the late Raj. In Africa, on the other hand, the war became a pretext for the resumption of the late nineteenth-century scramble as the former colonies of German Togoland, Cameroon, and Tanganyika were gobbled up by Britain, while German South-West Africa was taken by one of its dominions, South Africa. Even more disruptive was the intensification of forced labor practices, as over two million Africans were pressed into service as carriers in the African campaigns. But the greatest impact was felt in the Middle East, where Germany’s strategy of using the Ottomans as a means of diverting Allied forces and resources away from the Western Front produced disastrous results for the Turkish Empire, generating expansionary impulses that would transform Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine into a new British Middle Eastern empire under the auspices of the League of Nations, while France looked to do the same in Syria and Lebanon. Back home in Britain, the war had equally unsettling effects. Many historians have suggested that the Great War left Britons exhausted, introspective , and incapacitated by self-doubt.3 The fact that science and technology, which before  had appeared as the unequivocal proofs of Western superiority, were so deeply implicated in the unbelievable madness of industrial trench warfare led many of those who lived through the carnage, and many who had remained on the home front, to a state of profound mental anguish and moral crisis.4 After the war, some thinkers came to question the most basic tenets of European civilization, especially the previously undaunted faith in human reason, progress, and improvement. But for most political leaders and observers, paradoxically, the war reaffirmed their commitment to science and technological innovation , which it was believed could, if properly used, reverse Europe’s downward spiral and lay the foundation for postwar social and economic reconstruction. Indeed, for many in Britain, the war highlighted as never before the possibilities of systematic application of government planning in times of crisis, and reinforced demands for a more organized approach to scientific research. The importance of applied scientific knowledge to processes of industrial production, as well as the dearth of industrial research being done in Britain as compared with Germany, were underscored by the severing of commercial ties with the latter, which gave rise Science for Development |  You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. to immediate shortages of critical intermediate inputs and chemical materials for British industry.5 Many of the input shortages occurred in relatively new fields of industry that...