Michael Osborne

Michael Osborne is a historian of science and medicine who studies how these fields intersected with European colonialism and how the colonial context altered those sciences. His last book was a history of French naval medicine.

The project

Title: Global Science and Transnational Dimensions of European Imperialism

"Nineteenth century European imperialism has been framed as having only a minor part in the "Concert of Europe," an idea issuing from the Treaty of Vienna (1815). Historians have interpreted this treaty as a means to moderate the rise of nationalistic identities, counter revolutionary activities, and contain France's imperial ambitions. Yet imperialism was central to the growth of Europe. Imperialsim persisted in Great Britain and France and other European countries. The advent of reliable and rapid shipping, new weponry, railways, telegraphy, and "scientific" agriclulture and management transformed Europe and its colonies. European powers sometimes collaborated in the partitional of potential new lands and the acquisition of empire as is seen in the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885). Internal European developments were not in fact separate from empire but linked to it via governance, capitalism, new and refined financial instruments, and investments in extractive enterprises. Science, medicine, and technology, funded by governments and private enterprises, were prominent in this evolving colonial equation. My collaborator Dr. Raj and I will concentrate on imperial activities in Asia and Africa and produce an essay for university students charting the growth of empires in relation to science, medicine, and technology. We will also plan and secure authors for a projected special issue of a journal directed at professional colleagues on comparative European imperialism and science, technology, and medicine."

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études et Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Selective Bibliography

• (sous presse) “Persona studies in French naval and tropical medicine,” [exp. 2024], La Revue d'Histoire Maritime.
•  “The dynamic trajectory of French  Colonialism and Science, » The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire.” Ed. by  Andrew Goss. Routledge, 2021.
• “Maghreb of North Africa” in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 8, Modern Science in National  and International Context, (2020).
• “Zebu,” in  Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times. Ed. by A. Burton, R. Mawani, Duke University Press (2020).