AFRICA AS A LIVING LABORATORY: Science, Nature and Imperial Development in the Tropics 1860-1960

这个项目试图探索三个相关的问题。首先，19世纪下半叶的“非洲争夺战”如何影响欧洲的科学界和学科？第二，在热带非洲的帝国统治时期，科学家的角色是什么？他们进行了什么样的研究？最后，科学知识是如何冲击和影响殖民地经济发展的实践和计划的？该项目将主要集中在大英帝国及其附属的非洲领土上——特别是今天的肯尼亚、乌干达、坦桑尼亚、赞比亚、加纳、尼日利亚和冈比亚——但它也将借鉴与德国、法国、比利时、葡萄牙、美国和南非活动有关的文献，以便将这些论点置于跨国和帝国间的背景下。该项目的一个主要目的是编写一部专著，详细介绍在非洲被征服和非殖民化之间的一个世纪里，科学、帝国和发展是如何相互交织的。热带非洲是世界上最后经历欧洲正式殖民化的地区之一，这一过程恰逢一系列科学学科以及技术和研究方法的出现。事实上，历史演员们把欧洲大陆称为一个“活实验室”，帝国主义列强应该在这里进行科学研究和实验。该项目的研究将探讨三个松散重叠的历史时期：1860年至1914年，对应于欧洲人的探索、分割和征服时期；1900年至1940年，涵盖了殖民地国家的建立，随之而来的技术服务，以及为调查大陆而派出的一系列科学考察；从1940年到1960年，包括第二次世界大战的影响，以及在两次世界大战之间和战后时期发展的经济模式之间的紧张关系。在这一框架内，将密切注意四个科学研究领域：环境、医学、种族和人类学。这一横截面应该揭示殖民对科学认识论的多方面和往往不可预测的影响，反过来，科学对殖民主义的影响。它还应该强调领域科学的中心地位，不仅在非洲帝国的进程中，而且在逐渐将“民族科学”编纂为欧洲研究的合法领域方面。由此产生的专著将热带非洲置于前景，纠正其迄今为止在科学和帝国研究中被忽视的地位。

This project seeks to explore three related questions. First how did the"Scramble for Africa" in the latter half of the nineteenth century affect European scientific communities and disciplines? Second, what were scientists' roles during the period of imperial rule in tropical Africa and what kinds of studies did they produce? Finally, how did scientific knowledge impinge upon and influence colonial practices and plans for economic development? The project will concentrate most fully on the British Empire and its dependent African territories - particularly present-day Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Gambia - but it will also draw upon literature relating to German, French, Belgian, Portuguese, American, and South African activities in order to situate the arguments in a transnational and inter-imperial context. A primary aim of the project is to produce a monograph that offers a detailed historical account of the ways in which science, empire, and development intersected in Africa in the century between its conquest and its decolonization.Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonization, a process that coincided with the advent of a range of scientific disciplines as well as technologies and research methodologies. Historical actors, in fact, referred to the continent as a "living laboratory" in which imperial powers ought to embark upon scientific study and experimentation. The research for this project will explore three loosely overlapping historical periods: 1860 to 1914, which corresponds to the period of European exploration, partition, and conquest; 1900 to 1940, covering the establishment of colonial states, their attendant technical services, and a range of scientific expeditions sent out to survey the continent; and 1940 to 1960, including the effects of the Second World War and the tension between economic models developed in the inter-war and post-war periods. Within this framework, close attention will be paid to four arenas of scientific research: environmental, medical, racial, and anthropological. This cross-section should reveal the multifaceted and often unpredictable effects colonization had on scientific epistemologies and, in turn, that science had on colonialism. It should also highlight the centrality of field sciences not only to African imperial processes, but also to the gradual codification of "ethnosciences" as a legitimate realm for European inquiry. The resulting monograph will place tropical Africa in the foreground rectifying its hitherto neglected position in studies of science and empire.