Chapter 15: The Marriage of Science and Empire

Harari uses Captain James Cook's Pacific expeditions as a paradigmatic example, showing how astronomical research into Venus's transit served simultaneously as scientific inquiry and imperial reconnaissance, ultimately facilitating British colonization of Australia and New Zealand. The analysis reveals how European empires systematically funded scientific expeditions, botanical surveys, archaeological excavations, and linguistic studies not merely for knowledge acquisition but as instruments of territorial control and cultural domination. The chapter explores how imperial administrators mapped territories, decoded ancient scripts like cuneiform, and conducted ethnographic studies that served both scholarly and administrative purposes in governing conquered populations. Harari critically examines how scientific methodology was corrupted to justify imperial violence through racial classification systems and biological determinism, which provided intellectual legitimacy for conquest and exploitation. The discussion extends to modern manifestations of this legacy through cultural relativism and "culturism," where cultural differences replace biological ones as justifications for inequality and discrimination. The chapter also addresses the complex dual legacy of imperial science, acknowledging both its contributions to human knowledge through medical advances, geographical discoveries, and archaeological insights, and its role in enabling systematic oppression, including genocidal policies against indigenous populations like the Tasmanians. Ultimately, Harari argues that neither scientific revolution nor imperial expansion could have achieved their historical magnitude without the economic and ideological framework provided by emerging capitalist systems.