German Science in the Age of Empire: Enterprise, Opportunity and the Schlagintweit Brothers

Description

This seminal study explores the national, imperial and indigenous interests at stake in a major survey expedition undertaken by the German Schlagintweit brothers, while in the employ of the East India Company, through South and Central Asia in the 1850s. It argues that German scientists, lacking in this period a formal empire of their own, seized the opportunity presented by other imperial systems to observe, record, collect and loot manuscripts, maps, and museological artefacts that shaped European understandings of the East. Drawing on archival research in three continents, von Brescius vividly explores the dynamics and conflicts of transcultural exploration beyond colonial frontiers in Asia. Analysing the contested careers of these imperial outsiders, he reveals significant changes in the culture of gentlemanly science, the violent negotiation of scientific authority in a transnational arena, and the transition from Humboldtian enquiry to a new disciplinary order. This book offers a new understanding of German science and its role in shaping foreign empires, and provides a revisionist account of the questions of authority and of authenticity in reportage from distant sites. German Science in the Age of Empire: Enterprise, Opportunity and the Schlagintweit Brothers Contents List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgements Introduction: Empires of Opportunity 1 Entering the Company Service: Anglo- German Networks and the Schlagintweit Mission to Asia Building (a) Reputation, Building Networks: The Early Careers of the Schlagintweit Brothers Young Humboldtians in the Alps Berlin as a Hub of Indian and Central Asian Geography The ‘Magnetic Crusade’ in Britain High Aspirations 2 Imperial Recruitment and Transnational Science in India British Exploration and the North Indian Frontier Joseph Hooker and the Ideals of Gentlemanly Science Transnational Imperial Recruiting: A Typology National Discourses and Senses of Entitlement 3 An Ingenious Management of Patronage Communities Great Expectations Science Management from Afar The Debt of Exploration 4 Making Science in the Field: A Eurasian Expedition on the Move To See, to Know and to Remember: Concerns and Practices of Expeditionary Science By Grace of the Company: The Schlagintweit’s Physical Anthropology in the Context of British Rule in India Company Power and Imperial Knowledge Networks ‘Voyage of Discovery’ or Indian Tourism? Forms of Mobility in South Asia 5 The Inner Life of a ‘European’ Expedition: Cultural Encounters and Multiple Hierarchies Multiple Hierarchies and Unexpected Dependencies The Closest Companions A Fragile ‘Information Order’ Reinstating a Hierarchy of Knowledge 6 Contested Exploration and the Indian Rebellion: The Fateful Year 1857 Negotiating a Reputation The Great Indian Uprising Knowledge Gaps Securing a Written Monument 7 The Schlagintweit Collections, India Museums and the Tensions of German Museology Conflicts of Collecting The Flight Forward: A Private Schlagintweit Museum in Bavaria Between Memory, Science and Commodifi cation: The Schlagintweit Collections at the Jägersburg and Beyond The Social Fabric of Science: Collecting Honours and Rejections 8 Asymmetric Reputations: Memories of Exploration and German Colonial Enterprise The Schlagintweit Mission and the Foundation of the Indian Meteorological Department Intergenerational Encounters: Indian Pundits and the Schlagintweits Dry Technicalities, Supreme Landscape Views: The Schlagintweits’ Mixed Legacy in Britain The Triumph of ‘German Science’: The Schlagintweits as Scientific Heroes in a Pre-colonial Land Conclusion Archives Bibliography Index