Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
9-2021
Abstract
It would be of the greatest importance to meteorology’, noted the editor of the Singapore Chronicle in 1829, ‘if a set of hourly meteorological observations could be instituted at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Singapore, Malacca, and some station on the elevated plains of Hindostan’. 1 Of course, the author’s comments speak from a uniquely imperial perspective, whereby such observations would benefit the colonial service of – in this case – the British Empire, enabling enhanced knowledge of imperial atmospheres and the related economic and scientific benefits that this could bring. That meteorology was closely linked to empire and imperial control has long been acknowledged, as the ability to institutionalize knowledge about an environment, and thus to define what constituted legitimate knowledge, was ultimately a question of power.2 In Asia, a long history of weather observation was gradually pushed into institutional scientific spaces after the 1860s, with key observatories in Tokyo, Shanghai, Manila and Hong Kong, and meteorological services in India and across the China coast.3 This shift is attributed to the recognition that the science was critical to state building, especially for increasing agricultural yields; for safeguarding nascent aviation services, the latter particularly critical during the Asia-Pacific War; and for enabling better prediction systems for extremes of weather.
Keywords
History, Meteorology, Science, Asia
Discipline
Asian Studies | Place and Environment
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
British Journal for the History of Science
Volume
54
Issue
3
First Page
301
Last Page
304
ISSN
0007-0874
Identifier
10.1017/S0007087421000054
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation
WILLIAMSON, Fiona.(2021). Framing Asian atmospheres: Imperial weather science and the problem of the local c.1880–1950. British Journal for the History of Science, 54(3), 301-304.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3435
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087421000054