Rowley, Jude (2024) The Learned Society and Imperial Science in the British and German Empires, 1868-1918. In: Social History Society annual conference, 2024-07-08 - 2024-07-10, Durham University. (Unpublished)
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
According to Walter Rodney, European colonialism and the racism that legitimised it were reliant on ‘a set of generalisations and assumptions, which had no scientific basis, but were rationalised in every sphere from theology to biology’. This process of cross-disciplinary 'scientific' rationalisation was by no means an abstract process but was directly fostered by a concerted movement towards the formalisation of imperial sciences from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. This paper explores aspects of this movement through a discussion of the relationship between learned societies and empire in Britain and Germany from the mid-nineteenth century to Great War. It discusses how learned societies and the individuals that shaped them contributed to the fostering of a political culture of ‘scientific imperialism’ that would come to define debates around the future of empire in Britain and Germany in the years preceding the war. This paper explores the historical emergence of a network of interconnected groups, individuals, and publications surrounding learned societies such as the Royal Colonial Institute, the Eugenics Education Society, and the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. It argues that such learned societies served as an informal instrument of empire by providing a forum through which members of a wealthy and well-connected imperial class could construct and propagate rationalisations of imperialism under the guise of objective and value-free scientific endeavour. Engaging with historical silences surrounding these learned societies holds key historical lessons for present-day disciplines like International Relations, which continue to deny the role legacies of imperial science played in shaping their emergence and formalisation.