Blurb:

Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire

Irving places seventeenth-century science in the context of England’s colonization of the Atlantic world. She argues that men of science held a conception of empire which scholars have overlooked. This was the idea of man’s original dominion over the earth. Endowed to Adam in the Garden of Eden, this mastery over the world consisted in his perfect knowledge of nature. In the Fall, however, Adam lost his omniscience and consequently his earthly empire.

Scientists, including Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and John Locke, believed that it was England’s task to restore man’s dominion over nature. In this project, the Atlantic colonies were a repository of lost knowledge; a storehouse of information about climate, animals, plants and people. Bringing the history of early modern science to bear upon the intellectual origins of the British Empire, Irving investigates the way that England’s colonial empire became tied to the redemptive project of restoring man’s empire of knowledge.

Dr. Sarah Irving is a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University.