The Making of Scientific, Industrial and

Arrogant Europe

Rajesh KochharPresident IAU Commission 41: History of Astronomy

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, Punjab

rkochhar2000@yahoo.com

27 July 2013

Summary

Throughout the 19th century in its

encounters with the East Europe was

in a learning mode. Cultural

superiority and racial arrogance set

in in England in the 1830s.

It is no more than a coincidence that

the first British ship reached the

Indian coast the same year (1608)

the telescope was invented in The

Netherlands. This numerology

brings home the fact that modern

science

and technology grew hand in hand

with maritime trade, colonial

expansion and dominance over

nature and fellow human beings.

The key developments are these:

(1) For combined reasons of

healthcare, human curiosity and

commerce, medical botany and

natural history of distant lands were

studied through interaction with the

native population.

(2)For the safety of navigation,

scientific instrumentation and exact

sciences were developed as a self-

contained European exercise.

(3) Machinery was developed to

replace the Indian weaver. This was

also a self-contained, British,

exercise.

(4)Europe at large took to

development of dyeing and printing

processes.

In 1676, a 14-year patent was

granted to one William Sherwin

“for the invention of a new and

speedy way for printing broadcloth

which being the old true way of East

India printing and stayning such

kinds of goods”. In 1696, he

however conceded before the House

of Lords that his printed cloth

“would not bear washing”.

Intelligence on natural materials and

their use was indeed required from India.

i) In 1742, on instructions from his

superiors, the South India based

Jesuit Gaston Laurent Coeurdoux

(1691-1779) collected information

from dyers whom he had converted

and sent the account to Europe,

where it was widely read and where

it remained relevant for a long time.

It is a measure of the priorities of the

time that Coeurdoux’s fundamental

work as a pioneering researcher in

philology went unnoticed.

ii)The special process of Turkish red

used the Indian Chaya root and

Kasha leaves. Introduced into France

by an Armenian, it baffled chemists

for a long time until it was cleared

up, in 1902, by a calico-printer at

Leyden, Felix Dreissen, who got the

secret from a native dyer in Madurai

(south India).’2

In their 18th century encounters with

India and the East in general, the

trading nation of British displayed

genuine interest in, respect for, and

desire to benefit and profit from

traditional empirical technologies. In

the industrial Britain of the early

19th century, this admiration was

replaced by openly expressed

disdain. This is understandable. You

cannot lord over people you respect.

There is a persistent pattern in

Britain’s scientific and industrial

discoveries of the early 19th century.

Once a milestone was reached in

Western science, details of the steps

leading to it were obliterated, and

modern science and technology was

presented as a stand-alone, without

any pre-history.

I would like to illustrate this with the

help of 3 examples: zinc, steel, and

vaccination.

India devised zinc metallurgy, before

Alexander’s time, to be able to prepare

high-zinc content gold-like brass for

making Buddha idols.

As late as 1735, the Swedish chemist

Georg Brandt (1694-1768), who

identified cobalt as an element,

believed that ‘zinc could not be

reduced to metal except in the

presence of copper’.6

But, the commercial interests knew

better. In 1738, William Champion

(1709-1789) obtained a patent for

the extraction of pure zinc through

inverse distillation, and set up his

works in 1743.7

The Swedish professor Torbern

Bergman wrote in 1779 that several

years previously ‘A certain

Englishman’ went to China ‘for the

purpose of learning the art, returned

safely home, indeed, and appears to

have been sufficiently instructed in

the secret, but he carefully concealed

it’. A little later, in 1797, the German

professor Johann Bergman asserted

that the Englishman went not to

China but India for the purpose. 9

Seen from Europe it did not quite

matter whether the original home of

metallic zinc was India or China.

Not surprisingly, there is no English

account of any sort.

A 100 years previously, in 1608, the

Dutch optician Hans Lipperhey was

denied a patent on the telescope, ‘on

the ground that it is evident that

several others have knowledge of the

invention’.

Metallic zinc may have been

common knowledge in far off places,

but in a Euro-centric world if a thing

was new for Europe it did not exist

before.

Indian steel

Since pre-Alexandrian times, India

had been producing high quality

steel by melting pure iron in the

presence of carbonaceous material.

Europe already knew about its

cutting-edge properties because the

Damascus swords made out of it

were used against the Christian

Crusaders. Specimens and some

details about the making of Indian

steel reached Europe when the direct

trade began. In 1675 Robert Hooke

noted in his diary: ‘bringing soe as to

melt made the best steel after it had

been wrought over again’. This was

significant because Europe had

earlier associated the properties

of steel not with the process but with

the quality of the ore.

Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776)

has been invariably described as

‘English inventor of crucible

steelmaking’.

Was he inspired by the Indian

method? No contemporaneous

account would even admit the

question, leave aside discuss it.

James Moore Swank, US expert on

iron and steel, wrote in his 1892

History of the Manufacture of Iron

in All Ages that the details of

manufacture of Indian steel ‘in our

day’ ‘plainly suggest the crucible

process perfected by Huntsman’.

This came not from Britain but from

USA and that too when the 19th century

was coming to an end.

While discussing its own inventions

and discoveries, Europe did not

consider the Eastern antecedents to

be relevant. But when it came to the

But when it came to the Indian

scientific tradition, the roots, real or

imagined, were considered more

important than the fruits.

Some examples>>

Astronomy

Indian mathematical astronomical

tradition built over a millennium 6th

century CE onwards was dismissed

out of hand as imitative and its

Greek origins emphasized. There

was of course no mention of the

post- Alexandrian Egypt and Iraq

inputs that had gone into making of

the Greek science.

Far greater ingenuity was exercised

in the case of chemistry.

Chemistry

When a 14th century chemistry text

(Rasaratnasamuchchaya) named 41

previous authors, it was declared

with a straight face that the names

were mostly apocryphal .10

Similarly, when the author of

another Sanskrit text Rasasara

explicitly acknowledged his debt to

‘the traditions and opinions of the

Baudhas [ the Buddhists]’,

it was said that ‘ by Baudhas, the

author probably meant the

Muhammadans’.11

Surely Arabs would have liked to

hear that. But it was not considered

necessary to inform them. They in

their place were told that their role in

the world history of science had

been no more than as librarians and

archivists for preserving Greek

science till Europe was in a position

to take its heritage back.

Wootz

In the closing years of the 18th

century, samples of Indian steel

wootz were received in Britain , first

by chance and then on request. They

were investigated thoroughly

under the auspices of the Royal

Society. How significant the

introduction of wootz was can be

seen from the following:

About 1796, a wootz penknife was

presented to King George III.

•Sir Thomas Frankland sealed his letters

to Mushet ‘with the Sanscrit characters

denoting wootz, in full and prominent

display’.

• One of the trade cards of John Stodart

FRS, dated about 1820, carried the

inscription:

J. Stodart, at 401, Strand, London,

Surgeon’s Instruments, Razors and

other Cutlery made from Wootz, a

steel from India, preferred by Mr

Stodart to the best steel in Europe.

• Examination of wootz samples (in UK)

yielded two patents ( Mushet 1800,

Mackintosh 1825) while another ( Heath

1839) resulted from an observation of

steelmaking in South India.

•Heath in turn was at the receiving end

half a century later.

• Heath wrote, referring to the patents of

Mushet and Mackintosh that ‘the Indian

process combines the principles of both

the above described methods’.

•Half a century later, Heath himself was

at the receiving end :

Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) wrote

in his autobiography that Heath

conceived the idea of his ‘invention’

from ‘noticing in the native Wootz

steel-making of India the marvellous

effect of manganese’

•In 1819, Stodart entrusted Michael

Faraday with the task of analysis of

wootz samples. As Faraday wrote in his

diary, he ‘was desirous , among other

researches, to make an experiment, with

a view to imitating Wootz’. Indeed one

of the earliest successes reported in the

paper presented to the Royal Institution

in 1820 was the preparation of a

specimen which had ‘all the appreciable

characteristics of the best Bombay

Wootz’. Faraday wrongly concluded that

the strength of the wootz came from

aluminum. It however was a

‘fruitful error’ because it gave birth to

the new discipline of alloy steels. .

•Faraday (1819) erroneously believed

that the strength of wootz came not from

the process but from the presence of

other materials. This was a fruitful error,

because it opened the new field of alloy

steels.

The influential British metallurgist

John Percy in 1864 called wootz

making the Hindoo process of

steelmaking and its furnace the

Hindoo furnace. The nomenclature is

significant.

.

If it was a Hindu process, it called

for suitable Europeanization without

acknowledgement. ( Note that in

India itself historians used terms like

Hindu chemistry, Hindu

mathematics, Hindu sine.)

Smallpox

Variolation (inoculation with human

pox) was introduced in England in

1721, and vaccination (using

cowpox) in 1799. 20

Variolation continued to be practised

at the smallpox hospital in London

until 1822. It was altogether stopped

by an Act of Parliament in 1840.

In their time both variolation and

vaccination met with great hostility.

A smallpox hospital was opened in

London in 1746. ‘For a long time,

however, the prejudices against the

hospital were so great, that the

patients on leaving it were abused

and insulted in the street;

wherefore they were not suffered to

depart until the darkness of the night

enabled them to do it unobserved by

the populace’ .21

In the 1810s, Norwich city embarked

on a plan of persuading the poor to

get themselves vaccinated by paying

them a cash incentive of half a

crown. The plan in itself was quite a

success, but smallpox was not

extinguished.

Report of the Pauper Vaccination in

Norwich city for 1812–1813 pointed

out that the disease was ‘kept in

existence by unscrupulous

practitioners from London

who travelled to different places to

inoculate people with smallpox.

The only remedy lay, the Report

asserted, ‘in passing a law, imposing

a severe penalty on any one, directly

or indirectly concerned in the act of

variolous inoculation’.

---

Variolation had been practised in the

eastern parts of India since great

antiquity. Vaccination was officially

introduced in India in 1803.

Forgetting the resistance first the

introduction of variolation and then

of vaccination had met with in

Britain, the colonial government

wanted the Indians to overnight

become appreciative of the English

‘spirit of benevolence’ and express

gratitude for being conveyed ‘the

fruits of the happy discovery

[vaccination]’.23

In Calcutta, there were traditional

inoculators who variolated a small

fraction of the population creating an

epidemic. The situation was so

similar to the one that Norwich had

previously faced that paragraphs

from the Norwich Report were

plagiarized in the1831 Calcutta

Report written by Dr William

Cameron, Superintendent-General of

Vaccination, . This Report in turn

was enthusiastically cited in 1850

by the Smallpox Commissioners,

who added some remarks of their

own:

‘in a country where practices such as

Suttee and Infanticide were, until

lately, deemed justifiable on the

score of Religious usage, neither will

there be wanting bigots to mislead

the ignorant Hindoos, and to

prejudice their credulous and simple

minds, against whatever may be

falsely represented to them as an

innovation, or an interference with

their religious privileges’ .24

Note that when variolation is

practised in London even after

vaccination has been introduced,

smallpox inoculators are merely

called immoral and mischievous, and

sought to be dealt with by a strict

law. But when the same

phenomenon is observed in Calcutta,

memories of suttee and infanticide

are revived and the blame placed at

the door of Hindu bigotry, prejudice

and superstition.

Incidentally, if the British in India

had followed the Norwich model and

offered cash incentive to those

opting for vaccination, it is very

likely that prejudices against it

would have disappeared or at least

diminished.

England came a long way in the

period from the start of variolation in

1721 to its abolition in 1840. An

industrialized England was far more

confidant and arrogant than a trading

England had been. The period

around the 1830s was important for

a number of convergent reasons.

In history of technology, grant of a

patent constitutes a landmark; for

growth of industry its expiry.

Cartwright’s patent on power-driven

loom expired in 1801 opening the

field wide open. By this time

navigation had become scientific and

safe, and the deadly scurvy been

controlled.

Merchants- turned -rulers in India

could now forcibly extinguish the

age - old manufacture of fine

textiles. Britain’s industrial progress

can be gauged from the figures of

consumption of cotton.

In 1764 the import was 3.8 million

lb. In 1785 it shot up to 18 million

lb. In 1830 the figure was 265

million lb, and climbing up and up .

Between 1815 and 1832 the value of

cotton goods exported from India

fell from 1.3 million pound sterling

to a mere 1,00,000. In the same

period, the value of English cotton

goods imported into India rose from

a paltry 26,000 pound sterling to

4,00,000.

In 1835, the colonial government

brought its transition from the

Mughal administration to an end by

introducing a new education policy:

i)Persian was banished from office.

ii)Generous and uncritical support to

Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian

learning was discontinued.

iii)English was made the official

language ( Bentinck-Macaulay).

Significantly, the new Government

policy was facilitated by the

successful change in the missionary

position that had just taken place. The

missionaries moved to Calcutta from the

mofussil; targeted elitist sections of the

society rather the marginal; and focused

on English rather than the vernacular.

To sum up, racial arrogance set in

when Britain’s transition from a

trading nation to an industrial power

was completed, that is when British

machines finally made the fine

Indian weaver entirely redundant.

In 1837, a Bengal cavalry officer,

after an exploratory tour of Egypt

and Arabia in connection with steam

navigation, declared in his report: ‘It

seems to be a law of nature that the

civilized nations should conquer and

possess the countries in a state of

barbarianism and by such means,

however unjustifiable it may appear

at first, extend the blessings of

knowledge, industry and commerce

among people hitherto sunk in the

most gloomy depths of superstitious

ignorance. ’26

Interestingly, the 1977 Cambridge

History of Africa, Vol. 5 (p. 495)

quotes this passage, but wrongly

says ‘ It seems to me’ rather than

‘It seems to be’, making the

observation personal rather than

universal.

The 1837 use of the phrase ‘law of

nature’ in the context of human

affairs is significant.

It is as if the authorship of the

powerful knowledge system of

modern science bestowed such

cultural and racial superiority on the

Europeans as to give them a divine

right to rule over others.

THANK YOU

1 Thomas 1924, p. 207.

2 Thomas 1924, p. 211.3 Hegde 1991, p. 58.4 Beckmann 1797, p. 75.5 Beckmann 1814, pp.72-73.6 Mellor 1957, p.403.7 Kochhar 1994. 8 Bergman 1788, p.317.9 Beckmann 1814, p.91.10 Ray 1918, p. 101.11 Ray 1918, p. 91.12 Mushet 1840, pp. 662-663

13 Mushet 1840, p.670.14 Hadfield 1932, pp.225-226.15 ‘Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own correction. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself’- Vilfredo Pareto 1848-1923.16 Hadfield 1932, p.225.17 Heath however was unable to draw any financial benefit from his patent, because of its imperfect wording; see , e.g., Charles Dickens’ Household Worlds, 1853, Vol. 6, pp. 230-23218 Van Nostrand’s Eclectic Engineering Magazine, 1870, Vol. 3, No. 21, p. 280.

19 Percy 1864, p. 774.20 Shoolbred 1805, p. 1.21 Woodville 1796, p. 238.22 Shoolbred 1805, p. 9).23 Brimnes 2004, p. 221.24 Report of the Smallpox Commissioners, p 54, (Calcutta: Military Orphan Press).25 Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal 1814, Vol. 10. p. 124.26 Mackenzie 1837, p. 490.

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