Africa as a living laboratory : empire development and the problem of scientific knowledge 1870 1950 Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonialism a process that coincided with the advent of a range of new scientific specialties and research methods. Africa as a Living Laboratory is a far reaching study of the thorny relationship between imperialism and the role of scientific expertise environmental medical racial and anthropological in the colonization of British Africa. A key source for Helen Tilleys analysis is the African Research Survey a project undertaken in the 1930s to explore how modern science was being applied to African problems. This project both embraced and recommended an interdisciplinary approach to research on Africa that Tilley argues underscored the heterogeneity of African environments and the interrelations among the problems being studied. While the aim of British colonialists was unquestionably to transform and modernize Africa their efforts Tilley contends were often unexpectedly subverted by scientific concerns with the local and vernacular. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued Africa as a Living Laboratory transforms our understanding of imperial history colonial development and the role science played in both Frontmatter Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION: Africa as a Living Laboratory CHAPTER ONE. An Imperial Laboratory: Scientifi c Societies Geopolitics and Territorial Acquisitions CHAPTER TWO. A Development Laboratory: The African Research Survey the Machinery of Knowledge and Imperial Coordination CHAPTER THREE. An Environmental Laboratory: Native Agriculture Tropical Infertility and Ecological Models of Development CHAPTER FOUR. A Medical Laboratory: Infectious Diseases Ecological Methods and Modernization CHAPTER FIVE. A Racial Laboratory: Imperial Politics Race Prejudice and Mental Capacity CHAPTER SIX. An Anthropological Laboratory: Ethnographic Research Imperial Administration and Magical Knowledge APPENDIX: African Colonial Service Employment 1913 51 Notes Bibliography Index