The Routledge Handbook Of Science And Empire

What You Actually Need to Know About This Book Before You Grab It

The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire is a reference volume edited by John Gascoigne, published around 2007 by Routledge. It collects essays from various historians of science examining how scientific practice, institutions, and knowledge production were shaped by British and European imperialism from roughly the 17th through the early 20th century. That's the quick summary. The reality of using it is more complicated. I've used this book extensively in graduate-level research and in advising undergraduates writing theses on colonial science. Here's what actually happens when you try to work with it.

The Routledge Handbook Of Science And Empire

The volume is structured topically rather than chronologically. You'll find chapters on botany and empire, cartography, meteorology, anthropology, military science, museum collections, and the politics of classification. Each chapter is written by a different scholar, which means the quality varies noticeably from section to section. Some are excellent, deeply researched pieces. Others read like dissertation abstracts that never got expanded into full arguments. The editorial framing treats "empire" primarily as British empire, though there's coverage of French, Dutch, and German colonial projects. If you're researching Spanish or Portuguese empire in the Americas, this book will disappoint you. It's not designed for that. One thing the volume does well that other books in this area don't is insist on the materiality of imperial science. Several chapters focus on the logistics - shipping specimens, funding expeditions, the role of the East India Company as a scientific patron, the infrastructure of colonial observatories. That detail matters because it pulls the discussion away from pure idea-history and into the messy reality of how science actually got done under imperial conditions.

I ran into a specific problem last year when a student was trying to cite this handbook for a paper on Dutch botanical collecting in Java. The chapters on botany focused almost entirely on Kew Gardens and British collectors. There was a brief mention of Dutch activities but nothing substantive. What worked was cross-referencing the bibliographies at the end of the stronger chapters, particularly the one by Richard Drayton, and then pulling the primary sources he cited. Those primary references turned out to be far more useful than the handbook chapters themselves for that particular research question. Here's a counter-intuitive point that most people miss: this handbook is less useful as a comprehensive overview and more useful as a map of the field. The essays tell you who the major researchers are, what questions have been asked, and where the debates are concentrated. If you're starting a literature review on imperial science, skim every chapter and note the names that keep appearing. Those are the scholars and works you need to track down. Another thing beginners get wrong is treating the essays as definitive statements. They're not. Several chapters were written at different points in the author's career and reflect the scholarly conversations of their specific moment. The field has moved on since 2007. Work by Lorraine Daston, George Stocking, and others has shifted how we think about classification and empire. The handbook is a snapshot, not a destination.

Common pitfalls:

• Treating it as authoritative across all regions. It isn't. The coverage is uneven, with heavy emphasis on British contexts and lighter treatment of African and Asian colonial science beyond the immediate extractive interests of European powers.
• Assuming chronological coherence. The chapters span different time periods without synchronization. You might read one on 18th-century cartography followed by another on 19th-century anthropology with no bridge between them.
• Citing chapter authors interchangeably. Each chapter is a standalone essay. Make sure you're citing the specific chapter, not implying the entire handbook takes a single position on any given topic.

The book runs approximately 500 pages and was originally priced around £85 or $140. It's available through Routledge directly, academic bookshops, and secondhand markets. On secondhand platforms like AbeBooks or Amazon Marketplace, you can typically find copies in good condition for £25 to £45 depending on whether you want the hardcover or paperback. There is no legitimate free download. Any site offering a PDF is distributing pirated material, and the file quality is usually poor enough to make reading uncomfortable. More importantly, if you're doing academic work, your institution's library likely has a subscription to the Routledge e-book platform or the physical copy on shelf. Check WorldCat or your university's catalog before paying full price. What to use alongside it: Anthony McColley's West Indian Art: A Survey doesn't belong here - I mean John Gascoigne's earlier Science in the Service of Empire, which is a narrower but more accessible companion volume. For broader context, look at Benjamin Schmidt's Innocence Most Lost for European scientific voyages, and for the critical turn in the field, Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker's work on colonial cartography fills gaps the handbook leaves open.

One honest limitation worth stating: if your research focuses on the Global South or postcolonial critique of science, this book will feel Eurocentric by design. It was written from the perspective of historians based largely in UK and Australian universities. The critique of empire is present but filtered through institutional conventions of the mid-2000s. More recent work by scholars like Ann Laura Stoler, David Edgerton, and Sivaramakrishna has pushed the conversation further than what you'll find here. Use it as a starting point and a citation gateway. Don't treat it as the final word. The field around imperial science has expanded significantly since publication, and the conversations it initiated have moved in directions its contributors didn't always anticipate.