The volume investigates how the British, French, German, and Dutch empires influenced or were influenced by scientific exploration as a means Western culture used to gain entry to the non-Western world from around 1800 to the middle of the 20th century. The transnational perspective aids an understanding and comparison of the sciences as an instrument which the colonial powers employed to gain economic advantage and political control. The essays pay tribute to the 'metropolitan/centre' and 'colonial/periphery' viewpoints and to the different ways in which imperial expansion occurred. Science had specific meanings in the specific historical realities of European colonialism: the European case studies present similarities and differences in their imperial systems, and in the way in which science was used in relation to the level at which they interacted intellectually with the indigenous populations.