Vertical knowledge: hill stations as localities of science, health and aesthetics in British India, c. 1760–1920

This thesis examines the scientific significance of British mountain settlements in the Indian subcontinent, commonly known as hill stations, sanitaria, or convalescent depots, from 1760 to 1920. Employing an expanded definition of “hill station,” my thesis analyses not only elite resorts but also satellite stations and military cantonments that drew people, instruments, and objects to the mountains. It advances recent scholarship that identifies verticality as a three-dimensional conceptual paradigm, postulating mountain environments as eminently suited for scientific knowledge-production. In doing so, this thesis argues that hill stations, their surrounding hinterlands, and the higher elevations made accessible through these settlements were both the subjects and sites for scientific research in cartography, medical topography, meteorology, biogeography, bacteriology, astronomy, and cognate disciplines. This analytical framework, which deploys verticality and foregrounds scientific knowledge-production at hill stations, addresses a gap in a historiography that has overwhelmingly focused on these sites through the lenses of colonial control, class, race, and gender. The thesis charts the development of a vertical consciousness that characterised European engagement with mountains through four interconnected stages. Tracing the intellectual currents that preceded the establishment of hill stations, Chapter One situates the roots of verticality in the medicalisation and aestheticization of mountains in eighteenth-century tropical medicine and Alpine health tourism in Europe. It argues that the exigencies of empire-building spawned sophisticated genres of naval and tropical medicine, resulting in the medicalisation of high-altitude environments, while a blend of science and tourism in the Alps encouraged a specialised lexicon pertaining to mountain science and aesthetic consumption of these environments. Spanning the period before and after Humboldt’s pivotal Andean expedition (1799–1804), Chapter Two examines the verticalization of the Indian subcontinent’s mountain environments in early geographic narratives from 1760 to 1820. It analyses how composite modes of writing drew together medical, scientific, and aesthetic observations to create a vertical imaginary that distinguished miasmic lowlands and hostile summits from the picturesque and habitable ‘Goldilocks zone’ likened to temperate Europe. Following the assimilation of mountain territories in the 1820s, the dissertation examines hill stations as localities of scientific knowledge-production. The standardisation of medico-topographical literature, Chapter Three argues, mirrored and reified preceding vertical imaginaries using empirical data. Through strict thermometric and altitudinal measurements, medical practitioners identified the healthiest mountain zones sandwiched between belts of tropical diseases and barren summits beyond the tree line, leveraging their findings to advocate for the programmatic colonisation of these tracts. Parallel to medical developments, Chapter Four outlines the intellectual topography of hill stations vis-à-vis the zealous scientific communities established in these localities. In the early 1800s, cartographic expeditions used hill stations for supplies, recuperation, and as “centres of calculation.” In the following decades scientific assemblages in hill stations advanced biogeography and cognate disciplines, accentuating the contours of mountain verticality. This chapter foregrounds innovations in meteorology, astronomy, and bacteriology from 1870 to 1920 that demonstrate the centrality of hill stations as laboratories of modern science.