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

非洲是一个活生生的实验室：1860-1960 年热带地区的科学、自然和帝国发展

• 批准号: 0349928
• 负责人: Helen Tilley
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fixed Amount Award
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2009-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0349928&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: AFRICA; LIVING; LABORATORY; Science; Nature

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.

该项目旨在探讨三个相关问题。首先，十九世纪后半叶的“非洲争夺战”对欧洲科学界和学科产生了怎样的影响？第二，在热带非洲帝国统治时期，科学家的作用是什么？他们进行了哪些研究？最后，科学知识如何冲击和影响殖民实践和经济发展计划？该项目将主要关注大英帝国及其附属非洲领土——特别是现在的肯尼亚、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、美国和南非活动相关的文献，以便将论点置于跨国和帝国间的背景下。该项目的主要目的是编写一本专着，详细描述本世纪非洲从征服到非殖民化期间科学、帝国和发展的交叉方式。热带非洲是世界上最后经历正式欧洲殖民的地区之一，这一过程与一系列科学学科以及技术和研究方法的出现同时发生。事实上，历史人物将非洲大陆称为“活的实验室”，帝国列强应该在其中开展科学研究和实验。该项目的研究将探索三个松散重叠的历史时期：1860年至1914年，对应于欧洲的探索、瓜分和征服时期； 1900年至1940年，涵盖殖民国家的建立、随之而来的技术服务以及派出的一系列科学考察队来勘察非洲大陆； 1940年至1960年，包括第二次世界大战的影响以及两次世界大战期间和战后时期发展的经济模式之间的紧张关系。在此框架内，将密切关注四个科学研究领域：环境、医学、种族和人类学。这个横截面应该揭示殖民化对科学认识论的多方面且往往不可预测的影响，进而揭示科学对殖民主义的影响。它还应该强调实地科学不仅对于非洲帝国进程的中心地位，而且对于逐渐将“民族科学”编纂为欧洲研究的合法领域的中心地位。由此产生的专着将把热带非洲置于前台，纠正其在科学和帝国研究中迄今为止被忽视的地位。