Science As A Means Of Colonial Management

During the Japanese colonial period, Japan established North China Institute of Industrial Science and Agricultural Experiment Farm in North China, which mainly engaged in agricultural science and technology investigation and experiment. So far, no scholars have done a special investigation of this Institute, so that people could not grasp the whole picture of the characteristics of Japanese colonial science. Based on the materials from Japanese collections during my staying in Japan, this paper sorted out the establishment background, creation process, scientific research and technology promotion activities which it carried out and the end of the North China Institute of Industrial Science; merited Merton's reference in Science and Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England, I tried to analyse the social function of the early twentieth century colonial scientific institution—North China Institute of Industrial Science. The conclusion was that although the Japanese government claimed that North China Institute of Industrial Science was a "pure science" research institution established to promote the welfare of the Chinese people, but after the outbreak of full-scale Sine-Japanese War, it had evolved into a colonial management tool. On purpose of "the war by war", the Institute carried out much research related to plundering agricultural resources from China, and to some extent, it played a role in enslaving the Chinese people. This meant that science can not simply be angels, in some cases, science also had the function of leading the public worship for the colonial sovereign. Merton had not seen the ethos of science. Lewis Pyenson firstly used "scientific imperialism" to summarize it. In the post-colonial era, "Scientific imperialism" phenomenon has not disappeared. Therefore, during today's globalization process, it need to be guarded.