Tilley seeks to look at development of science at multiple levels (16). But most of her analysis is at the level of meta (the dominant discursive regimes of the time) and at the macro and meso (legal, politica, organizational).
Tilley’s own data is archival. She includes an appendix where she outlines colonial office lists that she used and gives context to the data in over 4 pages of narrative. She includes 29 tables of statistics the count over time of colonial offices in Africa. She also includes references to original documents in her endnotes. On page 440 she lists the archives she visited.
