German Science in the Age of Empire

Moritz von Brescius, Ph.D., is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Bern and Fellow of the Munich Centre for Global History, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

• Introduction: empires of opportunity; 1. Entering the company service: Anglo-German networks and the Schlagintweit mission to Asia; 2. Imperial recruitment and transnational science in India; 3. An ingenious management of patronage communities; 4. Making science in the field: a Eurasian expedition on the move; 5. The inner life of a 'European' expedition: cultural encounters and multiple hierarchies; 6. Contested exploration and the Indian Rebellion: the fateful year 1857; 7. The Schlagintweit collections, India museums, and the tensions of German museology; 8. Asymmetric reputations: memories of exploration and German colonial enterprise; Conclusion.

'Moritz von Brescius takes us to the heart of the fraught encounter between nineteenth-century science and power. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, he follows his fascinating protagonists through a world undergoing a process of globalisation that was as much about conflict as it was about connectivity. A brilliant and engagingly written case study of transnational science in the age of empire.' Christopher Clark, University of Cambridge