Professionalizing Science: British Geography, Africa, and the Exploration of the Nile

Abstract

The history of how science professionalized in the nineteenth century is also the history of empire, class, and transnational networks. British geography and its most visible enterprise, Nile exploration, played a central role in these transitions. In charting geographers and explorers of Africa as agents of these changes, this study identifies the mid-nineteenth century as an inflection point in the organization, practice, and perception of science.

This study evaluates how explorers fashioned their personas as scientists to respond to prevalent social, professional, and ideological pressures. They did so by bolstering their scientific credentials as key witnesses to the creation of scientific knowledge; by embracing the "rhetoric of development" to legitimize European rule over Africans; and by creating a persona that calmed British social and political anxieties prevalent in Victorian Britain.