The Routledge Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Science

John Holmes, Sharon Ruston, John Holmes, Sharon Ruston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317042334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Tracing the continuities and trends in the complex relationship between literature and science in the long nineteenth century, this companion provides scholars with a comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date foundation for research in this field. In intellectual, material and social terms, the transformation undergone by Western culture over the period was unprecedented. Many of these changes were grounded in the growth of science. Yet science was not a cultural monolith then any more than it is now, and its development was shaped by competing world views. To cover the full range of literary engagements with science in the nineteenth century, this companion consists of twenty-seven chapters by experts in the field, which explore crucial social and intellectual contexts for the interactions between literature and science, how science affected different genres of writing, and the importance of individual scientific disciplines and concepts within literary culture. Each chapter has its own extensive bibliography. The volume as a whole is rounded out with a synoptic introduction by the editors and an afterword by the eminent historian of nineteenth-century science Bernard Lightman.

I
Contexts

1
Science, Empire and Globalization in the Nineteenth Century

Sadiah Qureshi

University of Birmingham

The modern sciences are a global enterprise.¹ Scientists work in national and international contexts; whether in their educational and technical training, research teams, peer-reviewed journals, laboratories or mega-projects such as the CERN hadron collider, which is so large that it spans the Franco-Swiss national border, science is the transregional production of natural knowledge. The nineteenth century was a key period in the internationalization and globalization of the sciences. One barometer of this shift might be the international conference or world congress since, after all, despite a vast network of correspondence, ‘The Republic of letters never assembled’ (Alder 19). While national scientific societies had existed since the 1660s, the first transnational scientific conference took place much later in 1798, when Franz Xaver von Zach called together his colleagues to discuss astronomical and meteorological standards. The second such event also took place in 1798 as the revolutionary French State met to discuss the length of the metre. From these early origins, the number of international conferences rapidly expanded between the late 1860s and 1880s. Modelled on diplomatic assemblies, many early congresses met to discuss adopting standard measurements of experimental factors from time to electrical currents. However, they had a lasting impact by setting patterns of international collaboration and conversation that are fundamental to the sciences.² In conjunction, the sciences made claims to globally applicable knowledge. In the nineteenth century, such claims both coincided with and constituted forms of globalization as the sciences offered frameworks for making an increasingly globalized world, whether through new ways of reordering space or through creating human hierarchies. Yet, such ways of knowing were not uncontested.

By exploring scientific attempts to order space, life and knowledge, this chapter argues that the nineteenth-century witnessed a significant period of internationalization and expansion that laid the foundations of modern globalized science. In doing so, it pays particular attention to imperialism. Nineteenth-century sciences depended upon practices that both constituted and benefited imperialism. The sciences made knowledge claims in the service of empire, both implicitly and explicitly. Likewise, the material practices underlying scientific research often depended upon imperial infrastructure, whether in mapping new territories, providing suitable sites for fieldwork, brokering knowledge or collecting specimens. Drawing on examples from the physical and biological sciences throughout, this chapter focuses on the material practices of nineteenth-century science. In doing so, it traces how imperialism provided practitioners with career opportunities, access to resources, networks for collaboration and competition and locations to conduct research. This offers glimpses into how the sciences became global both in terms of their theoretical scope and everyday practice and how they constituted globalization through reshaping the modern world.

Ordering space

The sciences helped reorder space in the nineteenth century through mapping vast swathes of the globe. Whether plotting shipping routes, outlining nations or claiming ownership of colonies, mapping is a political process. As a form of information acquisition and representation, mapping helps make places knowable and can be instrumental for activities such as trade, governance and scientific exploration. As Matthew Edney’s wonderful work shows, one of the most ambitious mapping projects to take place in the nineteenth century was the mapping of India. William Lambton surveyed the Kingdom of Mysore in 1799, after the British defeated and killed Tipu Sultan at the Battle of Srirangapatam (Seringapatam) in the same year. Lambton then began surveying Madras in 1802. These early investigations are often credited with initiating the trigonometric survey because Lambton used triangulation to calculate distances. The process works by establishing an accurate base line from which a geometric net of triangles is built up. The net can then be used to make measurements that form the basis for new maps. By 1815 Lambton had triangulated Southern India. He was joined three years later by Captain George Everest. At this stage, the project was named the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India and continued into northern territory. When Lambton died in 1823, Everest became the head of the project until the final measurements were taken in 1841.

Intelligence gathering, whether through mapping or other means, has been argued to have been central to deciding the success or failure of state institutions in India (Bayly, 1997). Although the colonial authorities never achieved total control, projects such as the trigonometric survey did provide useful knowledge of the subcontinent and underpinned political claims about how India ought to be ruled and by whom. For example, colonial authorities claimed that the work ‘could not be undertaken by the Indians themselves’ but was necessary for the functioning of canals, military roads and trade (Edney, 319). Despite such claims, the work was heavily dependent on the knowledge of Indians. For example, Radhanath Sikdar joined the survey in 1840 and helped measure Peak XV. When it was found to be the highest mountain in the world, it was renamed the more familiar Mount Everest (Edney, 262). Later, Nain Singh Rawat helped survey Nepal, Tibet and Kashmir during the 1860s and 1870s. Unusually, Rawat’s contributions were accredited in the period with the award of a medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1877. The award is a rare example of elite institutions such as the RGS explicitly acknowledging their debts to indigenous knowledge in making scientific research possible. Both Sikdar and Rawat relied on their local networks of informants to provide intelligence and expertise that were incorporated into the larger mapping project (Driver; Raj). It is crucial that we remember the extent to which local and indigenous knowledge formed the bedrock of such ventures especially given their lasting historical significance. After all, the Great Trigonometrical Survey helped create and consolidate the very notion of India as a geographical whole.

Reconnaissance through mapping, fieldwork and exploration was often integral to global political and military activity. For example, between 1798 and 1801 Napoleon began an expedition to Egypt – then within the Ottoman Empire and strategically important for Eurasian trade – in search of a new colony. Although Napoleon failed to establish an Egyptian colony, his methods of reconnaissance were important for the development of globalized science (Gillispie). The expedition included a Commission of Science and Arts comprising 151 engineers, architects and medically trained personnel. Their expertise was crucial to Napoleon’s imperial ambitions. The voyage proved important for many careers, especially given that many of the men had only just graduated or were still studying at the École Polytechnique. The anatomist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and entomologist Jules-Cesar L. Savigny both established their reputations and challenged doyens in their field, such as Georges Cuvier, on the basis of their experiences in Egypt. In Cairo, Napoleon established the Institute of Egypt, modelled on the National Institute of France, to oversee the conduct and publication of much of the research from the expedition (see Reid’s related discussion on archaeological expeditions in Chapter 23 below). Most famously, the expedition led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which, when deciphered in 1822, allowed ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to be read for the first time in the modern world and had profound repercussions for archaeological studies in the region. Most importantly, the research from the expedition was published in the expensive and lavishly illustrated Description de L’Egypte between 1809 and 1828. Presented as a tour down the Nile, from Philae to Thebes, through the Valley of the Kings, to the Great Pyramids, the work remains one of the best examples of a vast encyclopedic enterprise intended to create and disseminate scientific knowledge to a broader public. Napoleon’s campaign exemplifies the use of large-scale, systematic, state-sponsored exploration in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Globalized fieldwork was also fundamentally important to the physical sciences. This is exemplified by astronomical fieldwork such as eclipse expeditions (Pang; Ratcliff). Solar eclipses allow astrophysicists exceptional opportunities to observe the sun’s corona, analyse the chemical composition of the outer atmosphere and search for planets. Alex Pang’s history of eclipse expeditions showcases how astrophysicists spent months planning how best to take advantage of opportunities to see eclipses across the globe. He explores why questions of how best to observe and record data, who would make a reliable witness, where best to see the full eclipse and how to get there all received sustained attention. As Pang argues, the details of such organization are fundamentally important. It is easy to imagine fieldwork as an ad hoc affair but this erases the labour that had to be invested in setting up field sites and observatories, whether mobile or more permanent. Astronomers had long observed total solar eclipses but in the 1860s scientific societies such as the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society of London and the British Association for the Advancement of Science spearheaded efforts to attract state support for a series of eclipse expeditions. Observations of the 1870 solar eclipse attracted considerable state funding. By 1888 a Permanent Eclipse Committee was set up by the Royal Astronomical Society that, in partnership with the Royal Society in 1894, became the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee. Eclipse expeditions were undertaken in India, North America and the Caribbean and on Pacific Islands. Many of these field sites had a European imperial presence that was vital for fieldwork. Colonial governments often provided much needed help and expertise, as in 1871, when the trigonometric survey of India was ordered to help an expedition by providing two assistants, some expenses and other aid. Colonial states also provided a vital infrastructure, such as railways and the telegraph. In the later nineteenth-century expeditions, the expansion of mass tourism also contributed to making places such as India more accessible.

Telegraphy became one of the most important new technologies that made it possible to communicate across vast distances speedily. Electric telegraphy was developed in 1837 but, after a series of failures, the first cable to successfully span the Atlantic Ocean was laid in 1861. By the 1870s telegraph cables had created a network that spanned the globe to connect together places as far apart as Gibraltar, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Africa’s east coast, South America’s east and west coasts and the West Indies. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Far East and the west coast of Africa were added to the web of cable routes (Hunt). The total length of the world’s submarine cables managed by both the government and private enterprise jumped from barely 4,400 kilometres in 1865 to 50,865 kilometres by 1870, 245,329 kilometres by 1890 and over an astonishing 406,307 kilometres by 1903 (Wenzlhuemer, 119). As Bruce Hunt has shown, the history of how this network developed beautifully exemplifies important aspects of science’s global reach. Significantly, he shows that telegraphy had an impact on both the theoretical concerns and practice of physics. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, electromagnetic phenomena were explained by appealing either to field theory or action-at-a-distance. He argues that action-at-a-distance became dominant in France and Germany and field theory in Britain precisely because of telegraphy. For instance, many British cables were underwater and so British physicists were especially interested in the propagation of signals, leakage and interference. In both France and Germany, action-at-a-distance was of more interest to physicists who did not encounter such problems. The move to standardize the measurement of electrical resistance using the electrical ohm has also been attributed to the role of telegraphy in providing a commercial impetus to attaining consensus. By the 1870s, British engineers commonly used the ohm and it subsequently replaced alternatives across Europe. Meanwhile, telegraph cables became known as the ‘nerves of empire’ because of their fundamental role in administering and maintaining imperial rule. The British state invested heavily in the new technology partly as a means to aid colonial administration, communication and control. The cables were also a material example of political interests since the gutta-percha used to manufacture the outer layers was produced from the sap of trees harvested in colonies such as Singapore and Malaysia.

Thus, while mapping and exploration provided politically relevant geographical expertise, new technologies helped reorder space by embedding new forms of communication and interconnectedness. Yet, the sciences also made knowledge claims that fundamentally transformed how life itself was understood.

Ordering life

Defining who counted as human and creating racial hierarchies to place them in was one of the most important and globalized attempts to order life in nineteenth-century Europe. For instance, throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in line with Christian orthodoxy, humans were typically considered a single species that originated with an act of divine creation and which might be split into a number of varieties or races (Wheeler). Three, each corresponding to the sons of Noah, were most commonly used, but five and seven were also proposed. Human varieties were distinguished by a wide variety of factors including clothing, religion, language, physical characteristics, geographical origins and nature of social, political and economic organization. Explanations for these differences tended to focus on environmental or post-diluvial migration. By the mid-nineteenth century, European scholars interested in these questions tried to redefine the physical, social and cultural criteria used to classify humans in Europe, giving rise to the new discipline of anthropology (again, see Reid, present volume, Chapter 23).

Such debates depended upon globalized practices of collecting and displaying humans, dead or alive. For example, throughout the nineteenth century, foreign peoples were imported into the major cities of Europe and North America to be displayed at exhibitions and world fairs (Qureshi). In cities such as Paris, London, Berlin and Chicago, members of the public could attend shows in which foreigners sang, danced and performed cultural rites as exemplars of their ethnic origin. At first such shows tended to be small-scale and might involve only an individual or a small group managed by an entrepreneur (Iwan Rhys Morus’s contribution to this volume explores the importance of ‘Staging Science’ further). By the end of the century, foreign peoples were being professionally imported dozens at a time and displayed within mock native villages at world fairs such as the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Anthropologists went to great lengths to take advantage of performers for their research. At the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, the Anthropological Institute held a series of conferences at the fair, headed by their President Francis Galton; experiments were performed on a San man to test his strength, and Robert James Mann, an expert on South African ethnology,...