The trope of the microscope in nineteenth-century India

Of all the many instruments that symbolized scientific endeavour in British India by the end of the nineteenth century, microscopes were among the most iconic, and yet, for both empirical and ideological reasons, their rise to scientific authority was slow and often contested. Moving from recreational use and marginal scientific status in the 1830s, by the 1870s microscopes were becoming integral to colonial education and governance and deployed across a wide scientific spectrum, their expanding use and heightened public presence facilitated by a rich and diverse visual culture. The eventual triumph of the microscope in India cannot be detached from its ongoing entanglement with local issues and agencies, its ascent to medical authority in particular constrained by scepticism about its utility. In this battle of instruments and imaginaries, microscopes - political emblems as well as material objects and scientific tools - pose critical questions about the visibility of science in a colonial context, about evolving techniques of seeing and representation, about the racialization of science and about the individual or collective authority of those who sought empowerment through the lens.