Colonial Expertise: the Institutionalisation of Colonial Knowledge in Europe during the Age of “First Modernity”

This article examines the role of science and knowledge in the development of the European colonial project during the long nineteenth century and analyses the institutionalisation of colonial knowledge in the age of “first modernity”. Colonial expansion and encounters with “new” worlds and previously unknown peoples enabled metropolitan societies to normalise new perceptions of populations beyond Europe. Over the course of the nineteenth century, European civilisation not only expanded its spatial reach but also increasingly understood itself as a dominant culture. The distinction between a “civilised” and an “uncivilised” world emerged as a key, yet highly flexible and contingent, line of demarcation. European colonial actors sought to lend credibility to this self-description by placing the so-called civilising mission under the authority of science. The article traces the complex entanglements between science and colonialism through the activities of learned societies and educational institutions. It analyses debates over the status of knowledge and competing approaches to colonial reorganisation in the period of first modernity, while also showing how colonial expansion generated practical demands, institutional frameworks, and favourable conditions for producing systematic knowledge about distant regions. Questions of effective governance and the challenges posed by colonial rule exerted a formative influence on emerging fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. These pressures encouraged large-scale institutionalisation and professionalisation, fostered methodological debates and research techniques, and contributed to the emergence of colonial expertise and disciplinary differentiation. The author argues that European colonialism opened new opportunities for several young academic disciplines, which secured political and public recognition by responding to colonial demands. At the same time, the relationship between science and colonialism remained deeply ambivalent, marked by tension, contradiction, and unintended consequences rather than straightforward collaboration.