Climates and Constitutions

Climates and Constitutions is the first major study of European attitudes towards India’s climate and their bearing on imperial expansion. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the accounts of European travellers and a large number of scientific and medical treatises, it makes an original contribution to the environmental and medical history of South Asia. The book examines in detail two interrelated developments: the emergence of modern ideas of race and the growing alienation of Europeans from the Indian environment. It shows how early optimism about settlement in India gave way to fears about racial degeneration and the abandonment of schemes for white colonization. However, it also considers European strategies for coping with life in the Indian climate, and the beginnings of attempts to transform the Indian environment. The book therefore elucidates the origins of British medical intervention in India and the patterns of life and thought which became distinctive features of the Raj. In its emphasis on cultural interaction and shared systems of knowledge, it also challenges many widely held assumptions about the nature of ‘colonial knowledge.