The Politics of Chemistry: Science and Power in Twentieth-Century Spain by Agustí Nieto-Galan (review)

"I am completely out of politics. I have only been a researcher" (p. 173). This assertion, made in 1996 by Spanish chemist Manuel Lora-Tamayo, Minister of Education under Franco between 1962 and 1968, and who decisively shaped scientific policies, characterizes the self-representation of many scientists—especially those working under authoritarian regimes. One of the main aims of Agustí Nieto-Galan's The Politics of Chemistry is to deconstruct this self-representation by demonstrating that "chemistry is political" (p. 10). Here, the discourse of a supposedly pure and apolitical science is no more than a rhetorical strategy, since Spanish chemists were "political actors" and "ideological agents," key figures in "the construction of political regimes" (p. 16). Following Mark Walker's reflections on German scientists in the Nazi regime in Nazi Science (Perseus, 1995), NietoGalan describes Spanish chemists as "fellow travellers," who adapted smoothly to the most diverse political systems, and willingly—even in part enthusiastically—put themselves in the service of authoritarian regimes.

Nieto-Galan's thesis is grounded in a comprehensive history of Spanish chemistry from the Bourbon Restoration to the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the Second Republic, the Civil War, and the Franco regime. Drawing on a wide range of literature and sources, the author reconstructs the emergence of a scientific community, its growing professionalization and internationalization, the establishment of research institutes and associations, and the attempts to link academic research more closely with industry. Nieto-Galan has clearly researched in great detail the biographies of Spanish chemists, whose careers often serve as a central thread.

After an incisive introduction with reflections on the political role of scientists in the twentieth century, the author devotes himself to the chemical sciences from the turn of the century to the Second Republic. Against a backdrop of the well-known discourse of backwardness, the emerging scientific community aimed to modernize the chemical sciences. Funded by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, founded in 1907, numerous Spanish chemists completed research stays abroad and became successfully integrated in international networks. Surprisingly, however, unlike in his introduction, the author merely notes that the Spanish chemists' pleas for closer links between academic research and industry overlapped with "Primo de Rivera's goals of industrial growth and social order" (p. 46). Thus it remains unclear whether and to what extent these scholars actually shared the dictatorship's political and ideological goals.

By contrast, regarding the Franco dictatorship, Nieto-Galan's account is very convincing. He impressively outlines the splintering of the scientific community during and after the Civil War (1936–39), when some chemists became compliant repressors, while others lost their posts, were forced into exile, or detained and even executed. Prominent chemists played a significant role in the "totalitarian organisation of science policies" and the attempts to reconcile the natural sciences with Francoist National Catholicism (p. 112). The author argues that the chemists were serving the dictator-ship's aims and values by setting up an applied chemistry program to foster the regime's autarchic industrialization policy, strongly inspired by American chemical engineering. Similar to Xavier Roqué, Nestor Herrán, and David Brydan, Nieto-Galan further proves that Spanish chemists were still integrated in international networks, even in the supposed isolation after World War II. Therefore, it was precisely the "autarchic chemists" who acted as "ambassadors for the international legitimisation of the regime" (p. 15). In the 1950s and 1960s, the widespread, apparently apolitical rhetoric of progress contributed to firmly anchoring not only the chemists but also the regime in the Western World. The book also discusses various forms of "liberal dissent" among the exiled scientific community both in Latin America and Spain. Nieto-Galan has not only written an inspiring book on the "moral ambiguity of chemistry," but has also contributed significantly to the intersection of science, power, and politics in the twentieth century (p. 226).