Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India

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by David Arnold

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published December 2004, 247 pages, paper

ISBN 0521617189

Interest in the science, technology and medicine of India under British rule has grown in recent years and has played an ever-increasing part in the reinterpretation of modern South Asian history. Spanning the period from the establishment of East India Company rule through to Independence, David Arnold's wide-ranging and analytical survey demonstrates the importance of examining the role of science, technology and medicine in conjunction with the development of the British engagement in India and in the formation of Indian responses to western intervention. One of the first works to analyse the colonial era as a whole from the perspective of science, the book investigates the relationship between Indian and western science, the nature of science, technology and medicine under the Company, the creation of state-scientific services, 'imperial science' and the rise of an Indian scientific community, the impact of scientific and medical research and the dilemmas of nationalist science.

Contents

List of illustrations; List of tables; General editor"s preface; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction: science, colonialism and modernity; 2. Science under the East India Company; 3. Western medicine in an Indian environment; 4. Technologies of the steam age; 5. Imperial science and the Indian scientific community; 6. Science, state and nation; Conclusion; Biographical notes; Bibliographical essay; Index.