Such an important feature of the Victorian life would certainly influence the realms of science and medicine, but British science also influenced the Empire. Superior technology in arms made occupation of the Empire possible in the first place, and natural science, the exploration and conquest of the unknown, used the colonies and helped justify them throughout the nineteenth century. If botany, the collection, naming, and classification of plants, was a kind of imposition of European, scientific order on the natural environment of a colony, then it might have foreshadowed the imposition of political order in the same area. Later in the nineteenth century, as science began to share some of the religion’s imaginative power, biological ideas about human evolution served to justify the domination of “lower” races. I don’t know enough about the history of the Empire to say how much scientific exploration and ideas affected colonization, but it seems like there is a fascinating interplay between the two. Darwin’s H.M.S. Beagle voyage, for example, only occurred because the Royal Navy wanted better hydrographical maps of South America to improve navigation throughout the Empire, and the data Darwin collected on that voyage gave him the raw material to shape his theory of evolution, which, by the end of the nineteenth century, was manipulated to defend colonization and maintaining the Empire.
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Helen, I think you are making a few contentious statements here that could do with some justification...references / links.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure of the extent to which evolution was used to 'justify domination of "lower races"', rather than the obverse, to challenge the idea of innate, god given inequality (allowing subjugation). Evolution was no popular idea in the antebellum South.
Darwin was famously disgusted by the appearance and lifestyle of "savages" such as the Fuegians shown in the Beagle painting (Conrad Martin's I think). Equally, however, he realised that these differences were cultural, not biological. Unlike many pre-evolutionary thinkers Darwin recognised that human races were not distinct species. He had been tutored by a black man in Edinburgh and was a vocal opponent of slavery (Desmond & Moore 2009 Darwin's Sacred Cause). Darwin was very much a Victorian gentleman but his profuse correspondence rarely gives insight into his socio-economic views - it is not really clear that he subscribed to Social Darwinism - and this is a much disputed topic. What little there is suggests that despite his cordial letter to Karl Marx (1st Oct 1873), thanking him for a copy of "Das Kapital", Darwin believed in laissez-faire economics and social meritocracy - where birth is less important than behaviour (http://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/History/Faculty/Weikart/Recently-Discovered-Darwin-Letter.pdf - although Wiekardt is not unbiased and pushes an agenda that goes beyond Darwin's brief Socioeconomic commentary).
The Beagle expedition mapping was as much about dominating trade and emerging nations in South America as it was to ensure security of sea routes connecting the Empire.
The impact of 19th century science on shaping the colonies is an interesting and underexplored theme. Sir Joseph Banks was a particular enthusiast and sponsor of expeditions, colonization and the establishment of useful foreign species in colonies (tea from China to India; and the ill-fated Bounty expedition to bring Breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies). There was a great boom in natural history exploration over the mid-19th century. Improved communication and shipping allowed access leading to better knowledge of the world and it's natural resources. Continental European countries considered natural history important in training colonial administrators (somewhat in contrast to the British). Was this really presented as justification for maintaining colonies in the late 19th century? Fascinating, but I suspect that it pales alongside the motivations of trade, missionary proselytisation and military dominance.