Science, Medicine and Cultural Imperialism

215 Pages·1991·22.037 MB·English

by  Teresa Meade, Mark Walker (eds.)

SCIENCE, MEDICINE AND CULTURAL
IMPERIALISM
Also by Mark Walker
GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE QUEST FOR NUCLEAR
POWER, 1939--1949
Science, Medicine and
Cultural Imperialism
Edited by
Teresa Meade and Mark Walker
Department of History,
Union College, Schenectady, New York
M
MACMILLAN
©Teresa Meade and Mark Walker 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1991
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First published 1991
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Science, medicine and cultural imperialism.
1. Colonies. Science. Influence of Western European
culture. ca 1500-ca 1900
I. Meade, Teresa II. Walker, Mark
509
ISBN 978-1-349-12447-3 ISBN 978-1-349-12445-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-12445-9
Contents
Notes on the Contributors Vl
Introduction 1
1 Scientific Standards and Colonial Education in British
India and French Senegal
Michael Adas 4
2 Science, Medicine and French Colonialism in
Old-Regime Haiti
James E. McClellan III 36
3 Technology and Imperialism in the Indian Context: The
Case of Steamboats 1819-1839
Satpal Sangwan 60
4 Medical Imperialism Gone Awry: The Campaign
against Legalized Prostitution in Latin America
Donna J. Guy 75
5 Cultural Imperialism in Old Republic Rio de Janeiro:
The Urban Renewal and Public Health Project
Teresa Meade 95
6 Herbs, Knives and Plastic: 150 Years of Abortion in
South Africa
Helen Bradford 120
7 Mental Testing and the Understanding of Race in
Twentieth-Century South Africa
Saul Dubow 148
8 Legends Surrounding the German Atomic Bomb
Mark Walker 178
Index 205
v
Notes on the Contributors
Michael Adas is a professor of history, Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, NJ. His most recent work is Machines as the Measure of
Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance
(Cornell University Press, 1989).
Helen Bradford is a lecturer in economic history at the University of
Cape Town, South Africa. She is the author of A Taste of Freedom:
The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 (Yale University Press,
1987).
Saul Dubow is a lecturer in history in the School of African and Asian
Studies, University of Sussex, England. He is the author of Racial
Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa 1919-36 (St
Martin's Press and Macmillan, 1989).
Donna J. Guy is Director of the Latin American Area Center and an
associate professor of history, University of Arizona, Tucson. She
has recently finished a study of legalized prostitution in Argentina
entitled Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and
Nation in Argentina forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press.
James E. McClellan m is an associate professor of the history of
science at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. He has
written on European scientific societies in the eighteenth century. His
book Colonialism and Science in the Old Regime: The Case of French
Saint Dominigue is forthcoming from the Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Teresa Meade is an assistant professor of history, Union College,
Schenectady, NY. She has written on the history of community
protest, the labor movement and race relations in Brazil and is now
writing a book on the social history of Alta California, Mexico,
1769-1850.
Satpal Sangwan is a scientist at the National Institute of Science,
Technology and Development Studies, New Delhi, India. He has
Vl
Notes on the Contributors vii
authored Science, Technology and Colonisation: An Indian Experi
ence 1757-1857 (New Delhi: Anamika, 1990).
Mark Walker is an assistant professor of history at Union College,
Schenectady, NY. He is the author of German National Socialism
and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949 (Cambridge University
Press, 1989).
Introduction
Why publish a collection of essays on 'science, medicine and cultural
imperialism'? Because although economic and political imperialism
have been studied intensively, cultural imperialism has not, and
arguably science and medicine provide a good opportunity to do so.
According to the American historian Woodruff D. Smith, imperi
alism can include the forcible establishment of political control by
one state over others, the exertion of influence by strong nations over
weaker ones through real or potential exercise of force, and the
economic exploitation of nonindustrial countries by industrial ones.
Imperialism can also refer to the attitudes of elites and masses in
Europe (or those of European descent in other nations) toward other
peoples, including both attitudes of racial superiority that justified
exploitation and, sometimes, ideas of the obligations of 'civilized' to
'uncivilized' peoples.1 In separate works covering a range of subjects
historians Hans-Ulrich Wehler in Germany and E. J. Hobsbawm in
Britain have emphasized that imperialism was used by conservative
elites to divert into overseas expansion those social forces unleashed
by industrialization which threatened the political status quo at
home.2
But what about cultural imperialism? Science and medicine are
often considered clear examples of the cultural superiority of indus
trialized countries over what is now called the Third World. That
superior view takes for granted that 'western' science and medicine
are inherently progressive, that non-western countries are fortunate
to have science and medicine transmitted to them, and that such
fortunate countries should also be grateful. Therefore, an investiga
tion of the role of science and medicine in a dominated society can
reveal important aspects of cultural imperialism. Little work has been
done on the role played by science or medicine in imperialism. The
American historian of science Lewis Pyenson has studied one feature
of the interaction of cultural imperialism and the exact sciences in
particular, imperialist strategies for creating institutions abroad, and
has provided a model which compares the different strategies em
ployed by Dutch, French, and German physicists and astronomers in
this regard.3 But it is not clear that Pyenson's work can provide a
model or theory for the interaction of science and medicine with
imperialism in general.
1
2 Science, Medicine and Cultural Imperialism
The following essays are intended to make a contribution to the
historical study of cultural imperialism by covering collectively a wide
range of time periods, countries, sciences, and branches of medicine.
Taken together, the papers in this volume use an admittedly vague
definition of 'cultural imperialism'. But since research in this area is
only in the early stages, a little ambiguity seems appropriate.
Michael Adas opens this collection with a discussion of scientific
standards and colonial education during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, in particular the policy regarding the diffusion of
scientific learning and technical expertise to the colonized people.
His comparison of British India and French Senegal illustrates both
the strategy differences at the imperial center and their results in
the colonized periphery, as well as the crucial connection between
imperialist theory and scientific practice, which subsequent essays
develop further. James McClellan pursues another aspect of
colonialism in his study of the role of scientific inquiry in Old-Regime
Haiti at the end of the eighteenth century. Based on the labor of
thousands of slaves, Saint Domingue's sugar economy made it one of
the world's single most important and most lucrative colonies, and a
major center of organized science and experimentation in the Ameri
cas. Satpal Sangwan examines a similar colonial relationship; how
ever, not in the areas of policy or experimentation, but in that of
applied science. In his study of steam engine technology, Sangwan
demonstrates the military and economic purposes and results behind
the colonial authorities' introduction of steamboats to India during
the first half of the nineteenth century.
Turning from explicit colonial to neo-colonial relations, the next
two articles examine imperialist exploitation of public health policy
as a way of influencing and restructuring Latin American societies.
Donna Guy shows how the movement to legalize prostitution in
order to lower the incidence of venereal disease came into conflict
with moral reform movements to protect European women against
sexual slavery, while virtually ignoring the plight of indigenous and
non-white Latin American women. Teresa Meade's paper examines
a 'scientific' urban renewal and public health project in Rio de
Janeiro around the turn of the twentieth century. The project, mainly
conceived and implemented for the ruling elite and foreign investors,
both cleaned up the city and drove the poor out into even worse
living conditions.
In separate essays on South Africa Helen Bradford and Saul
Dubow demonstrate that the long-term legacy of colonialism is the