Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Michael Adas, Cornell University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8014-9760-4.
Adas examines the ways in which Europeans' attitudes toward the material superiority of their culture influenced their attitudes toward, and interactions with, the peoples of the newly discovered areas of Africa, India and China.
Adas begins with the early European explorers. They were convinced of the superiority of their culture mostly due to religious conviction. Beyond that, there was a ranking of sorts of the cultures encountered based mostly on social/cultural sophistication; thus the Chinese were ranked very highly, the Indians somewhat less so and the Africans much lower due mostly to their lower level of social organization as well as other factors.
As the Industrial Revolution began, attitudes toward non-Western cultures began to change -- the basis for superiority became, more and more, the gap in science and technology between Europe and the newly-discovered areas. Efforts were made to explain the lack of progress of these cultures; for the Chinese it was due to a bureaucracy that stifled inventiveness; for the Indians and especially the Africans it was postulated that other factors such as the enervating climate were to blame.
With technological progress, Europeans began more and more to take a paternalist or racist attitude toward the non-Western cultures, Africa in particular. These cultures' inability (or lack of desire) to adopt Western technologies and scientific notions resulted in the belief that they were lacking in intellectual ability, backward, ignorant and incapable. Even the Chinese, who had previously been revered for their high culture, began to be reviled as backward, stagnant, decadent.
Adas presents the idea of the civilizing mission. Adas claims that while this notion was often used to justify exploitation, nevertheless, "many . . . were firmly convinced that they were acting in the long-term interests of the peoples brought under European rule." (p. 200) The civilizing mission involved bringing Western technology, attitudes, and organizational skills to the non-Western cultures, as well as Christianity.
Along with the civilizing mission came the use of science or pseudoscience to justify paternalism and racism. Some used quasi-scientific methods to justify the European hegemony as the natural outcome of a supposed white racial superiority. Adas cautions, however, that much of what modern scholars tend to view as racism is really an anachronistic projection. While there was some racism (particularly in Africa), in many cases racism seems to have played little or no part in colonial policies. Adas maintains that while racism did play a part, that part is largely confused with a cultural chauvinism.
Adas concludes with a (seemingly unrelated) presentation of the effects of World War I on European attitudes toward science and technology. The fury of the war and the massive casualties caused a re-evaluation of European assumptions of racial superiority and the civilizing mission.
Copyright 1996 by Gordon Zaft.