Science At the End of Empire: Experts and the Development of the British Caribbean, 1940-62

219 Pages·2018·4.549 MB·English

by  Sabine Clarke

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General editors: Andrew S. Thompson and Alan Lester
Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie
When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded
by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years
ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that
‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant
an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’.
With well over a hundred titles now published, this
remains the prime concern of the series. Cross- disciplinary
work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of
cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of
gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the
environment, language and literature, migration and
patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has
always wished to present comparative work on European
and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the
submission of books in these areas. The fascination with
imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating,
and this series will continue to lead the way in
encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the
field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its
development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge,
responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs
of this ever- expanding area of scholarship.
Science at the end of empire
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SELECTED TITLES AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES
WRITING IMPERIAL HISTORIES
ed. Andrew S. Thompson
EMPIRE OF SCHOLARS
Tamson Pietsch
HISTORY, HERITAGE AND COLONIALISM
Kynan Gentry
COUNTRY HOUSES AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Stephanie Barczewski
THE RELIC STATE
Pamila Gupta
WE ARE NO LONGER IN FRANCE
Allison Drew
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
ed. Robert Burroughs and Richard Huzzey
HEROIC IMPERIALISTS IN AFRICA
Berny Sèbe
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Science at the
end of empire
EXPERTS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
BRITISH CARIBBEAN, 1940–6 2
Sabine Clarke
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © Sabine Clarke 2018
The right of Sabine Clarke to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons
(CC-BY) licence, thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust, which permits non-
commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester
University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details
of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
ALTRINCHAM STREET, MANCHESTER M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 3138 6 hardback
ISBN 978 1 5261 3140 9 open access
First published 2018
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for any external or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and
does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by Out of House Publishing
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For my grandfather, Leon Norton
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CONTENTS
List of figures and tables— page viii
Acknowledgements— ix
Abbreviations— xi
Introduction 1
1 New uses for sugar 21
2 Scientific research and colonial development after 1940 49
3 ‘Men, money and advice’ for Caribbean development 76
4 Laboratory science, laissez- faire economics and modernity 104
5 An industrialisation programme for Trinidad 129
6 Bringing research ‘down from the skies’ 154
Conclusion: Science and industrial development: lessons from
Britain’s imperial past 181
Bibliography— 193
Index— 202
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FIGURES AND TABLES
Figures
1 Map of the Caribbean in 1953. (Reproduced with
permission from the National Archives, Kew Gardens.) page xii
2 Map of Trinidad and Tobago. (Public domain, via
Wikimedia Commons.) xii
3 Norman Haworth. (Public domain, via Wikimedia
Commons.) 42
4 Aerial view of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture,
c.1951. The experimental sugar factory is in the
foreground. (Reprinted with permission of the University
of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.) 112
5 Staff of the ICTA, c.1951. Wiggins is seated in the front
row, fourth from the left 116
Tables
1 Principal exports of the British Caribbean colonies in 1947 13
2 Population density in the Caribbean territories, 1950 15
3 Research institutions in Britain’s colonies funded by the
CDW Acts, 1940– 52 61
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright
material and the publisher will be pleased to be informed of any errors
and omissions for correction in future editions.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has its origins in my time at the Centre for the History
of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, London,
and I am very grateful to David Edgerton for the guidance he gave
me when I first began developing my ideas, and for the many times
he has cast a critical eye over my arguments. I am also indebted to
former colleagues at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
at the University of Oxford – Sloan Mahone, Mark Harrison, Margaret
Jones, Karen Browne, John Manton and Maggie Pelling. I thank them
for their encouragement, advice and friendship. In the writing of this
book, I have been fortunate to have the benefit of incisive feedback
from David Clayton and Henrice Altink at the University of York, and
my gratitude also goes to Richard Bessel, Stuart Carroll, Bill Sheils
and Catriona Kennedy for conversations that helped me clarify my
thoughts. In addition, I want to thank several cohorts of students who
have taken my Special Subject at York; their thoughts on the histories
of development we studied gave me much inspiration and enormous
pleasure.
Versions of some of the chapters of this book have been presented
at conferences and seminars in the Europe, the USA and UK, and
the discussions that followed were helpful and stimulating. I would
like to thank in particular Michael Worboys, Jonathan Harwood,
David Killingray, Prakash Kumar, Desiree Schauz, Robert Bud, Mary
Chamberlain, Viviane Quirke, Sally Horrocks, Paul Mosley, Fern
Elsdon- Baker, Jon Agar, Brian Balmer, Jeff Hughes, Casper Andersen,
Graeme Gooday, Wenzel Geissler, Rita Pemberton and Debbie
McCollin.
This book would have been impossible without a fellowship from
the Wellcome Trust that enabled me to carry out my research and
travel to Trinidad, Barbados and the USA, and I would like to thank the
Trust for its support. The success of my research trips was the result
of the help and expert advice I received from the archivists at UWE,
St Augustine, Trinidad and the National Archives of Trinidad and
Tobago, the Barbados National Archives and the National Archives
and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland, plus of course,
the team at the National Archives in London. I am extremely grateful
to all of them.
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