This penetrating examination of a paradox of colonial rule shows how the massive transfers of technology--including equipment, techniques, and experts--from the European imperial powers to their colonies in Asia and Africa resulted not in industrialization but in underdevelopment. Examining the most important technologies--shipping and railways, telegraphs and wireless, urban water supply and sewage disposal, economic botany and plantation agriculture, irrigation, and mining and metallurgy--Headrick provides a new perspective on colonial economic history and reopens the debate on the roots of Asian and African underdevelopment.

Introduction; Institutions, policy and research; Research and policy on irrigation: the case of Pakistan; Discussion: linking research with policy; Conclusion.

Volumes for 1889/90-1891/92 include: Report on sanitary measures in India, v. 30, 1896/97.