Review: The Science of Empire by Zaheer Baber

Hardcover, 298 pages
Published 1996

Borrowed from the library

Read June 2017

The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India

by Zaheer Baber

Baber's monograph does a thing some not very good academic writers do (I see my students do it a lot, which seems like a mean thing to say, but to be fair I often do it myself in a first draft): there's a lot of information front-loaded, and then at the end he tells you what to make of it all. So for a long time you're bored, then he gets you really interested just in time to stop. The book's organization is kind of weird: 100 pages of what pre-colonial Indian science was like, then a 30-page history of the British takeover of India, then 100 pages of how the British used science in India. It feels like three different books, because Baber never unites the two halves until his 10-page conclusion. Like, what kind of point he's trying to make by juxtaposing pre-colonial Indian science and colonial British science is never established as he tells you these things; the chapters are mostly unargumentative recitations of historical fact. I was not convinced that we needed a hundred pages of pre-colonial science to buttress whatever point Baber was trying to make; on the other hand, there's very little about what the Indians did with the science the British brought.

The last ten pages were great, though. This could have been an excellent article, instead it's a dull book.