The author explores the ways in which European perceptions of their scientific and technological superiority shaped their interactions with people overseas. Adopting a broad, comparative perspective, he analyzes European responses to the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, India, and China, cultures that they judged to represent lower levels of material mastery and social organization.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: Before the Industrial Revolution -- First encounters: impressions of material culture in an age of exploration -- The ascendancy of science: shifting views of non-Western peoples in the era of the Enlightenment -- Part II: The age of industrialization -- Global hegemony and the rise of technology as the main measure of human achievement -- Attributes of the dominant: scientific and technological foundations of the civilizing mission -- The limits of diffusion: science and technology in the debate over the African and Asian capacity for acculturation -- Part III: The twentieth century -- The Great War and the assault on scientific and technological measures of human worth -- Epilogue: Modernization theory and the revival of the technological standard.