This superb compilation of essays situates the history of the social sciences from the 18th century onward in the contexts of various imperial formations. It provides us with rich accounts of how the social sciences were shaped by diverse forms of imperial order while at the same time they also contributed to shaping them. Authored by an international group of leading scholars, all essays manage to combine global historical questions with due attention to local contexts. The book crosses many academic disciplines, and it fills an important gap in the currently available literature on the global history of knowledge in general and the social sciences in particular. * Dominic Sachsenmaier, Professor of Global History, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany * The foundational moment of the modern social sciences in the 19th century coincided with a time of empire. Imperial logics, mostly implicitly, seeped into the terms and categories that social scientists use. It is high time to de-imperialize the social sciences. This book makes important strides towards a critique of what we could call, for want of a better term, 'methodological imperialism.' * Sebastian Conrad, Professor of Global History, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany * An excellent book for scholars of expertise, empire, and global history alike. * Isis Journal *
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