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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2020
This article examines the little-known but exceptionally well-documented German Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition to India and Central Asia in 1854–58, under the auspices of the British East India Company and the king of Prussia. The brothers’ careers present an instructive study of the opportunities and conflicts inherent within transnational science and the imperial labour market in colonial India in the course of the nineteenth century. Until now, historians have largely emphasized the ways in which European East India companies provided scientific practitioners with professional mobility from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. In these accounts, German scientific practitioners are represented as especially mobile, moving more or less freely within foreign empires, because at the time no ‘German’ empire existed that might compete for allegiances and make them appear suspect. My article, in contrast, offers a revisionist account of this globalizing picture in two senses. First, a close look at the local everyday practices of the Schlagintweit brothers’ expedition highlights the considerable tensions and frictions that accompanied imperial recruitment to South Asia—even for German scientific practitioners. What emerges instead is a rich picture of the contradictory interpretations of supposedly cooperative projects among contemporaries, and the instrumentalization of scientific activities for political ends in the Indian subcontinent, for both established and aspiring colonial powers. Second, the ways in which the Schlagintweits’ scientific expedition was represented and remembered in subsequent decades shows how the politics around transnational science projects only intensified with German unification.
Acknowledgements: I wish to thank several friends and colleagues for inspiring conversations about previous versions of this article: Daniel Midena, Christoph Dejung, Adrian Ruprecht, Angelika Epple, Meike von Brescius (née Fellinger), Ulrich Päßler, Margret Frenz, and John Darwin. I am also grateful to the Journal's editors and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts.
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38 Ulrich Päßler, Ein ‘Diplomat aus den Wäldern des Orinoko’. Alexander von Humboldt als Mittler zwischen Preußen und Frankreich (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009). Berlin only became a leading scientific centre during the Kaiserreich. The universities of, for instance, Göttingen, Halle, Heidelberg, and Jena had been far more important and internationally visible in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
39 Kanz, Kai Torsten, Nationalismus und internationale Zusammenarbeit in den Wissenschaften. Die deutsch-französischen Wissenschaftsbeziehungen zwischen Revolution und Restauration 1789–1832 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997), pp. 39–41Google Scholar.
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46 Bunsen, who had mastered Persian and Arabic himself, not only wished to visit the East, but also personally knew all members of the Company’s Court of Directors. His role as a scientific and cultural mediator is expertly described in Kirchberger, Aspekte, Chapter 6.
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58 J. Hooker to Murchison, 19 July 1859, RBG, DC 96, 406.
59 Other cases of now-celebrated German recruitment into British India, for example, of the renowned forestry expert and lifelong botanist Dietrich Brandis, at first drew heavy polemic from the British public: Brescius, German Science, pp. 85–87.
60 The other brothers were Eduard, a Bavarian officer who joined the Spanish invasion of Morocco in 1859–60, and the much younger half-brother Max, who was well connected in the colonial societies of the Wilhelmine Kaiserreich as a board member of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft. He undertook two exploratory trips to Asia Minor in the closing years of the nineteenth century and vehemently suggested the region for future German settlement and commercial intervention. See Schlagintweit, Max, Deutsche Kolonisationsbestrebungen in Kleinasien (Munich, 1899)Google Scholar.
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71 Buist to Norton Shaw, 14 November 1854, RGS, CB4/279. I thank Felix Driver for these sources.
72 Buist to Norton Shaw, 16 April 1855, ibid.
73 ‘Our Weekly Gossip’, Athenaeum, 1378, 25 March 1854, p. 376.
74 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich [hereafter BSB], Schlagintweitiana [hereafter SLGA], II.1.5.
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86 See Hermann Schlagintweit, ‘Section across the Brahmaputra River’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal [JASB], 25 (1856), p. 1.
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90 H. Schlagintweit et al., Results, Vol. I, pp. 36–37. Other sites of recruitment were colonial hospitals where they signed up a ‘Native doctor’ called ‘Harkishen’ who joined the expedition and saved Hermann's life with an operation, and the Sanskrit College at Calcutta, from where the brothers enlisted a learned munshi for assistance with their philological studies and who accompanied them back to Europe for 18 months.
91 H. Schlagintweit, Reisen, Vol. I, pp. 234–35; Finkelstein, ‘Mission’, p. 198.
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95 Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 155, 366. Considerable parts of Vol. III of their Results—the Route-book of the western parts of the Himálaya, Tibet, and Central Asia (Leipzig and London, 1863)—was based on the work and observations of previous British travellers and Company officials: ibid., pp. 4–12.
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100 H. Schlagintweit to Humboldt, 11 December 1856, BSB, SLGA, II.1.43, 371. The following quotes from ibid.
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105 For a critical reflection on the problematic category of indigenous ‘local’ knowledge and outlook, which was, according to imperial narrative conventions, often negatively contrasted with Europeans’ supposedly greater outlook, agency, and ambition, see Brescius, German Science, p. 119; Driver and Jones, ‘Hidden Histories’, p. 428.
106 H. Schlagintweit, Reisen, Vol. IV, p. 201.
107 ‘General Map of India and High Asia: mountain ranges, elevations, and river basins, provinces and seats of government’ (1868), from H. Schlagintweit, Reisen, Vol. I.
108 H. Schlagintweit et al., Results, Vol. I, p. 42.
109 Waller, The Pundits; Raj, Relocating Modern Science.
110 H. Schlagintweit, Reisen, Vol. II, pp. 153–54.
111 Shapin, Steven, ‘Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’, Annual Review of Sociology, 21 (1995), pp. 289–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 302–03. Charles Darwin would also later question the value of their testimonies on Himalayan fauna.
112 Driver, ‘Face to Face’, p. 454.
113 ‘Review of Schlagintweit, Results’, The Athenaeum, 1764, 17 August 1861, pp. 215–16, p. 216.
114 Ibid.
115 Driver, ‘Face to Face’, p. 455.
116 Andrew Grout, ‘Geology and India, 1770–1851: A Study in the Methods and Motivations of a Colonial Science’, PhD thesis, SOAS University of London, 1995, p. 128.
117 Christie to the EIC's Court of Directors, 5 January 1830, quoted in ibid., pp. 129–30.
118 Mazumdar, Shaswati, ‘Introduction’, in Mazumdar, S. (ed.), Insurgent Sepoys: Europe Views the Revolt of 1857 (New Delhi: Routledge, 2012), pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 3–4.
119 Vicziany, Marika, ‘Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in Early Nineteenth-Century India: The Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762–1829)’, Modern Asian Studies, 20 (1986), pp. 625–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arnold, Science, p. 22.
120 The Athenaeum, 1379, 1 April 1854, p. 408.
121 Thuillier, Henry and Smith, Ralph (eds), A Manual of Surveying for India (Calcutta, 1851)Google Scholar, Part IV, Chapter IV, pp. 636–67. Cf. the instructions, with the Schlagintweits later noting in one of their field reports: ‘The observations on the temperature, velocity and quantity of water, &c., of various rivers, have been continued throughout the journey.’ Schlagintweit, A. et al. , ‘Report, Vol. VI’, JASB, 26 (1858), p. 102Google Scholar.
122 Watson, John Forbes, ‘Indian Soils. Analysed under the direction of the Reporter on the Products of India’, in Watson, John Forbes, A Classified and Descriptive Catalogue of the Indian Department, Class I, Subdivisions VI (London, 1862), pp. 23–26Google Scholar; on his distinction, see ibid., p. 286.
123 Prospectus to Technical Objects, Alpenverein-Museum, Innsbruck PERS 26.1/5, ‘Robert und Hermann Schlagintweit, ‘Collectanea Critica, 1848–65’.
124 H. Schlagintweit, ‘Practical Objects’, 21 September 1857, BL, MSS EUR, F 195/5.
125 Ibid.
126 Communication by J. D. Dickinson, secretary of East India House, to the Schlagintweits, 8 July 1858, GStAPK, I. HA Rep. 89, Geh. Zivilkabinett, Nr. 19767 ‘Acta des Kgl. Geh. Cabinets betr. die von den Gebrüdern … Schlagintweit aus München, jetzt in Berlin eingereichten Schriften etc., 1852–1885’, 177.
127 ‘Messrs. Schlagintweits’ Indian Mission’, The Athenaeum, 1580, 6 February 1858, p. 178.
128 Hermann, and Schlagintweit, Robert, ‘Aperçu sommaire des résultats de la Mission scientifique dans l'Inde et la haute Asie’, Extrait des Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des sciences, 45 (1857), pp. 1–7Google Scholar.
129 Their extensive proposals for colonial improvement plans and exploitative schemes in the ‘Practical Objects’ in many instances merely repeated what had already been discussed, or even practised, for decades in India and High Asia, including the brothers’ encouragement to extend the areas of tea plantations on the slopes of the Himalayas, or the better use of timber resources going to waste every year. Cf. Rappaport, Erika, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), Chapter 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
130 ‘The Latest Indian Mission’, The Athenaeum, 1566, 31 October 1857, pp. 1358–59.
131 Mazumdar, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.
132 ‘Latest Indian Mission’, The Athenaeum, p. 1359.
133 Ibid.
134 Stafford, Robert A., Scientist of Empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, Scientific Exploration and Victorian Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 119Google Scholar.
135 Joseph Hooker to the company Director William H. Sykes, February 1858, RBG, JDH 2/9, 76.
136 J. Hooker to Murchison, 19 July 1859, RBG, DC 96, 406.
137 Humboldt to Murchison, Berlin, 19 May 1856, Edinburgh University Library, Gen. 523/4; copy at Alexander-von-Humboldt Research Group, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
138 Murchison, Roderick, 1857 ‘Address’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 27 (1857), pp. xciv–cxcviiiGoogle Scholar, cl–clviii.
139 J. Hooker to Murchison, 19 July 1859, RBG, DC 96, 406. On the call for an enquiry, see ‘Review of Schlagintweit, Results’, p. 215.
140 Ibid.
141 For early de-escalating efforts, see Bonplandia, 21, 15 November 1857, p. 332.
142 ‘Messrs. Schlagintweits’ Indian Mission’, The Athenaeum, 1580, 6 February 1858, 179; Kölnische Zeitung, reprinted in H. Schlagintweit, Reisen, Vol. I, p. 593.
143 See the rich documentation of this episode in the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, Adelsmatr. Adelige, S 156.
144 See Hermann and Robert's submission to the king, Munich, 1 June 1859, ibid., doc. 1.
145 For instance, since the brothers had at times enlisted the service of entire Himalayan villages to collect plants and minerals in the region, these collectibles frequently lacked any complementary data that could frame their analysis and comparison in Europe: BSB, SLGA, V.I.5.2.
146 ‘Das grosse Reisewerk der Gebrüder Schlagintweit’, Illustrierte Zeitung, 919, 9 February 1861.
147 Ibid.
148 Friedel, Ernst, Die Gründung preußisch-deutscher Colonien im Indischen und Großen Ocean (Berlin, 1867), pp. 82–83Google Scholar.
149 Ibid.
150 Adelman, ‘Global History Now?’; Osterhammel, ‘Global History’.
151 Harrison, Mark, ‘Science in the British Empire’, Isis, 96 (2005), pp. 56–63CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
152 Arnold, David, ‘Plant Capitalism and Company Science: The Indian Career of Nathaniel Wallich’, Modern Asian Studies, 42 (2008), pp. 899–928CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
153 Robert Gordon to H. Schlagintweit, 5 October 1880, BSB, SLGA, IV.6.1.19, 2.