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Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969

A global history project that examines the diffusion of scientific and environmental discourses from India to Britain and the US. 

This book examines how imperial agendas and colonial stereotyping shaped dietary and agricultural research carried out in the 1920s in British India, from soil protection initiatives to studies of diet and healthy living. It also discusses how a selective interpretation of this research, which focused on the supposed vigor of one community, the Hunzas, influenced the organic and lifestyles movements which later emerged in Britain and the US from the 1940s to the 1960s.


270 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2026

Asian Studies: South Asia

History: History of Ideas

History of Science


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Table of Contents

List of figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Robert McCarrison’s imperial medical career in India and dietary experiments, 1902–1935

2 The Howards’ agricultural research in British India and the development of the Indore Process, 1900–1931

3 Adapting imperial agricultural and nutritional science for a British context

4 J. I. Rodale, the ‘healthy Hunzas’ and the organic movement in the US

5 ‘Hunza’ as Shangri-La in North American travelogues and film in the 1950s and 60s

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

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