About this Book

"Social and economic history of science and technology has emerged as a major theme of interdisciplinary research in South Asian history since the late 1990s. This book contributes to the field by exploring the correlation between technological knowledge and industrial performance with a focus on electricity, an emerging technology during 1880 and 1945. The arrival of electricity necessitated the introduction of new institutional facilities and with the growth of technological systems, the culture of entrepreneurship grew - there was demand for trained manpower to handle machines and need for better educational facilities. Taking a broad view of the subject, the narrative is built around the historical experiences of the local Bengali-speaking population in colonial Bengal. While recent research on science and technology under the colonial rule tends to focus on elite actors-both European and Indian - it is important to identify people, mostly Indians, who excelled in the field of technology, without prior academic training in engineering or science. This monograph brings back focus on the hitherto unexplored vernacular sources and emphasizes that the history of technology in India is basically a history of India, the history of its people, and not simply a history of the Indian techno-scientific tradition as proposed by the literature emerging from the West. Adopting the social constructionist model, it presents an amalgamation of archival and Indian language source materials to delineate the diverse nature of the appropriation of technological ideas into Indian culture"--