Colonial encounters and the forging of new knowledge and national identities: Great Britain and India, 1760-1850

In opposition both to the dominant vision of colonial science as an hegemon ic European enterprise whose universalization can be conceived of in purely diffusionist terms, and to the more recent perception of it as a simple re ordering of indigenous knowledge within the European canon, this essay seek s to show the complex reciprocity involved in the making of science within the colonial context. Based on the example of India during the first centur y of British colonial conquest, it examines the specificities of intercultu ral encounter in the subcontinent, the formalized institutions that were en gendered, and the kinds of knowledge practices that emerged in the case of the geographical survey of India. The essay suggests that the knowledge cre ated in this context is not just local in character, but participates wholl y in the emergence of universal science, as well as of other institutions o f modernity.