Imperial Science in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The history of imperial science has been a growing topic over recent decades. Overviews of the imperial history of science have rarely included the Russian, Habsburg, and German empires. The history of Central and Eastern Europe has embraced empire as an analytical and critical category only recently, having previously pursued national historiographies and romanticised versions of imperial pasts. This article highlights several key narratives of imperial sciences in Central and Eastern Europe that have appeared over the past twenty years, especially in anglophone literature. Interdependence between national and imperial institutions and biographies, the history of nature as an interplay of scales, and finally, the histories of imagining a path between imperialism and nationalism, demonstrate how the history of imperial science can become an important part of the discussion of Central European history from a global perspective, as well as how the history of science can be factored into the general history of this region. Finally, I argue that the imperial history of science can play an important role in re-thinking the post/decolonial history of Central and Eastern Europe, an issue that, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has become the centre of intellectual attention.