This book proposes a comparative reading between formal, or non-formal, structures of learning and individual agency abilities, highlighting influences and entanglements in different geographies from multiple spheres of knowledge and practices.

“Learning Places” is an expression that intends to underline the very nature of technical and scientific knowledge transmission related to the built environment transformation of imperial colonial areas. This volume proposes an approach that emphasises the crucial role of the connection between individual and institutional levels, forming a complex network of Learning Places. By comparing different case studies in fields of knowledge and transformation of the built environment—military engineering and cartography, among others—the book establishes a comparative frame of the political-scientific enterprise of empires, across geographies and times.

Technical and Scientific Training in the Construction of Empires is of key interest to researchers, teachers and students of a variety of disciplines, including the history of science and technology, architecture and urban studies, and colonial and post-colonial studies.