Roland Jackson is a historian of nineteenth-century science in Great Britain, who is the author of a highly praised biography of John Tyndall, The Ascent of John Tyndall: Victorian Scientist, Mountaineer, and Public Intellectual (OUP, 2018), which given the nature of some of Tyndall’s research work established Jackson as an expert on the early history of the very actual climate debate. He has, also, in this capacity published some very sensible work on the, somewhat heated, “did Tyndall steal from Eunice Newton Foote” discussion. Tyndall also features in Jackson’s newest book, albeit as just one of a cast of a multitude of expert voices, Scientific Advice to the Nineteenth-Century British State (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023)[1].
Jackson’s book is a vast repository of information, detailing the interactions between experts–scientists, engineers, medical advisers–and politicians over an extraordinary wide range of topic, seemingly from every aspect of human activity, in Great Britain throughout the nineteenth century, cooked down to a bare minimum to fit it into its slightly more than three-hundred pages. If expanded to its fullest extent, the information packed into those pages would, with certainty, fill a multi-volume encyclopaedia. However, despite its compactness, Jackson’s tome is not dry and indigestible, but well written, highly readable, informative, lucid, at times almost lyrical and it left this reader, at least, with a strong desire to discover more in greater depth about, what seems like, a thousand different topics.
In the nineteenth century expert advisors interacted with and were consulted on a myriad of different topic by politicians, including health and safety in mines, factories, and explosive stores, public heath, the building of railways and the prevention of rail accidents, the prevention of marine disasters, the design of weapons, taxation, and much more. To handle all of these diverse topics in one continuous, chronological narrative would, I think, produce a highly complex and probably unreadable text, but Jackson approaches the task with a different strategy.
His book is divided into seven section, six of which, excluding the first, deals with an area of public political policy and in which Jackson then deals with separate and interrelated topics chronological, showing how the handling of them by politicians and their expert advisors developed throughout the century, the main divisions are–(II) Empire and War, (III) Food, (IV) Infrastructure and Transport, (V) Industry, (VI) Social Condition and Public Health, (VII) Revenue and Standards.
As already pointed out his opening section (I) is different and deals with the Rise of Science. The books opening sentences state:
Any starting point for a history of scientific advice to the British state will be arbitrary. The founding in 1660 of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, generally known as the Royal Society, is as good a place as any to begin. That is because this organization, surviving today as Britain’s elite scientific institution, had strong links to the state from the outset.
This is followed by a brief sketch of the evolution of science in general and the Royal Society in particular during the eighteenth century leading up to the major sea change that the Royal Society underwent in the early part of the nineteenth century and the emergence of new scientific bodies such as the British Association, the Geological Society, the Astronomical society, the Institute of Civil Engineers, and others. The medical profession had professional societies with much older roots. Jackson goes deeper into both the Royal Society and the British Association.
Having established the sources of many of the expert advisors, in particular the Royal Society, Jackson now takes us, topic for topic, through those areas where politicians called upon those advisors to dispense their wisdom to the political decision making machine, the British Parliament in Westminster. On each topic the reader gets introduced to a seemingly endless flood of committees and Royal commissions that were formed and in which selected advisors were called upon to add their opinions to the weight of the decision making process.
What is made very obvious, particular in the first half of the century in how little influence those selected advisors had on any given issue in comparison to other political factors and how often inquiries petered out without any substantial legislation making it onto the books. It becomes very clear the parliamentarians, who themselves come almost exclusively to the upper echelons, practiced what would now be labelled a libertarian attitude to reform, propagating the view that problems such as health and safety or pollution would be regulated by the owners of the factories, railways, or whatever because it was in their own interest and didn’t need the interference of the state in their private affairs. This attitude being oft contrary to the advice given by the experts. Whilst reading, the term that kept popping up in my head was laissez faire but as Jackson did not use the term in his main text, I began to wonder if I was misinterpreting his narrative. However, in his excellent twenty-seven page Conclusion, of which more later, he uses laissez faire to describe exactly those attitudes where it had occurred to me.
It is interesting to follow how as the century advanced this laissez faire approach was gradually eroded, as it became more and more obvious that the various areas were anything but self-controlling and/or self-improving and that legislation based on the advice proffered by the experts in those committees and commissions was actually necessary. Sometimes, this recognition and the necessary implementation took a look time to finally come to fruition. Jackson drops the example of air pollution, a constant theme throughout the nineteenth century was only finally, really tackled with the Clean Air Act of 1956! Decimalisation of the British currency was discussed and recommended by the experts for much of the century, but was rejected by the politicians on the grounds that it would not be understood and thus rejected by the great unwashed, probably leading to public disturbances, it was finally introduced on 15 February 1971! Metrication was on the table from early on in the century when the need for a unified national system of weights and measures was under discussion but was initially rejected in favour of the Imperial System as being too French and too revolutionary. It continued to be discussed and recommended by the experts throughout the century but despite the 1897 Weights and Measures Act, which finally legalised the use of metric units for trade, it was first 1965 before Britain began metrication, although as Jackson points out they still have miles and the pint!
Some random thoughts on the political side from the vast convolute that Jackson presents. The major influence on policies by members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords was due to personal vested interests; these launching, disrupting, blocking, or even killing of policy initiatives on a regular basis. The number of times that proposed legislations was stymied by a change of government. The constant back and forth between the government and local authorities over responsibility for areas such as sewage disposal and public health before late in the century central bodies with responsibility for the area were finally established. The highly active role of the Privy Council in the nineteenth century, then still a powerful political force, unlike today.
On the other side, within a long list of expert advisors who served on committees, gave evidence to Royal commissions, gave advice on specific problems, and were consulted on a bewildering range of topics, a small number of names, some of them well known from the history of science keep cropping up again and again asked to apply their expertise to the latest problem under discussion. One gets the feeling that figures such as Michael Faraday, George Airy, John Tyndall and Lyon Playfair must have spent their entire time rushing from one advisory meeting to another, in between doing extensive scientific research into some relevant political question or another. One aspect that I personally found fascinating was the battles between medical experts who supported the different theories of the hypothesised general causes of ill health, this being a period when the real answers were not yet know, a strong reminder how recent the discovery of the real scientific causes of disease is.
The aspect of the book that most impressed me whilst reading is how Jackson manages to juggle the streams of information that he delivers to his readers without sending their brains into overload, truly a master class in succinct formulation and delivery. I mentioned earlier that the information that he delivers is very compact and if expanded to its fullest extent, the information packed into those pages would, with certainty, fill a multi-volume encyclopaedia. Jackson did, in his original manuscript unpack and expand some examples of how the problems were approached and handled in a series of case studies. The publishers decided the book was too long and the case studies were sacrificed in the service of comparative brevity. However, these have been published separately under the title Case Studies in Scientific Advice to the Nineteenth-Century British State: A companion to Scientific Advice to the Nineteenth-Century British State (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023), two-hundred pages of absolutely fascinating reading available in hardback and paperback at very reasonable prices (the main book is not cheap) and almost given away as a Kindle.
The book closes with a twenty-eight page Conclusion: Constraints on Influence, which summarises the entire contents of the book brilliantly and in its entirety would make for a much better review than my feeble efforts.
There are sadly no illustrations, but there are very extensive endnotes that largely refer to the impressive bibliography but also contain occasional supplementary information to specific points. As already stated the bibliography is very long and very impressive, in particular the very, very long list of Parliamentary Papers that Jackson consulted during his research. There is also a very comprehensive index.
This book is, in my opinion, destined to become a classic and an obligatory read for scholars of virtually all aspects of nineteenth-century British science, engineering, and medicine, as well as scholars of nineteenth-century British politics. It is a serious academic tome and not really designed for the casual reader, although the case studies could definitely appeal to a wider audience. However, I suspect that those scholars who do take up Jackson’s excellent tome will, like myself, find themselves going, now that is fascinating or really!, I must find out more about it.
[1] Roland Jackson, Scientific Advice to the Nineteenth-Century British State, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh Pa., 2023