The participant lists and locations of the most recent International Congresses of Psychology (Cape Town, 2012, and Yokohama, 2016) indicate that academic and applied psychology has been spreading rapidly in Asian, African, and Latin American countries. Yet, even though psychology has gone global, substantial research about the history of psychology has lagged behind in areas outside Europe and North America. Hence, Linstrum’s study of the British psychologists who applied psychological concepts to, and tests on, colonized subjects in the British Empire during the first part of the twentieth century is an important contribution to the understanding of current psychological activities as well as to imperial history.
Linstrum has skillfully divided an enormous amount of archival material from the cities of five continents—including London; Akron; Washington, D.C.; Accra; Nairobi; Lusaka; Melbourne; and New Delhi, among others—into the three categories “Minds,” “Tests,” and “Experts.” “Minds” begins with the psychological activities of the...