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Science, Surveying and Scientific Authority: The Brothers Schlagintweit in ‘India and High Asia’, 1854–57

ABSTRACT This article traces the journeys of and controversies surrounding the Schlagintweit brothers in ‘India and High Asia’. The brothers were Alpine glaciologists from Germany who were invited by the East India Company in 1854 to complete the Magnetic Survey of the Indian subcontinent on the recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt. This article discusses how the Schlagintweit brothers became the subject of controversy, and how they vanished from the record of the history of surveying as abruptly as they had emerged. Their story calls into question established historiographical narratives about ‘colonial science’ and ‘Western science’ in the subcontinent.