Introduction; 1. Measuring Mountains; 2. Unstable Instruments; 3. Suffering Bodies; 4. Frozen Relics; 5. Higher Gardens; 6. Vertical Limits; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
An innovative global history of science, empire and geography explaining how the Himalaya became the highest mountains in the world.
Lachlan Fleetwood is a research fellow at University College Dublin.
'This book outlines the ways in which the imaginative geography of
the Himalayas was constituted by western scientific knowledge,
indigenous cosmologies and labour in the nineteenth century
contributing to a global science of mountains. Here East India
Company surveyors and naturalists jostle with Bhotiya and Tatar
mountain guides, their multiple narratives framed through an
interdisciplinary lens of botany, biogeography, glaciology, and
anthropology. This is environmental history at its best.' Vinita
Damodaran, University of Sussex
'… [the book] will fascinate anyone interested in how a complex mix
of scientific and human acumen, applied against the Himalayan
natural history, led to a modern understanding of the 'roof of the
world.' … Highly recommended.' J. W. Dauben, Choice
'This is an unusual and interesting multi disciplinary study of
imperial expansion, exploration and scientific achievement showing
how the world came to see itself in vertical as well as in
horizontal terms. Beautifully illustrated and well ordered, it will
be an important contribution to the field as well as an absorbing
read for the non scientist.' Wendy Palace, Asian Affairs
'Science on the Roof of the World is a compelling interrogation of
scale, agency, and mobility in the imperial making of putatively
global sciences. It deserves the attention of historians of science
interested in the interplay of colonial and indigenous knowledge
systems, the impact of terrain on scientific technologies and
techniques, and the ways in which European empires haphazardly but
enduringly reshaped the modern world.' Thomas Simpson, Isis, a
journal of the History of Science Society
'This book will be of keen interest to students and scholars of
imperial history, the history of science and the environment, and
historical geography.' Katherine Arnold, British Journal for the
History of Science
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