Abstract
This book investigates the creation and movement of knowledge — of people and their customs, of objects, of languages, of plants for medicine and food, and of the topography of land and sea — in and between the settlements of the English East India Company (EIC) during the period 1660–1720. Knowledge is a term used to describe scholarship, to trade, and to personal relations. Knowledge can be transmitted in an oral exchange, a written work, a map or drawing, or an object. In the language of the day, the forms of knowledge I will discuss were classed as ‘natural’ and ‘useful’: in modern language, they are encompassed by a broad definition of science, technology, and medicine.1 In each chapter, relationships between scholars who advised the EIC’s Directors in London and those who made collections and descriptions in the settlements abroad are discussed. Many of these scholars were associated with the Royal Society of London and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and several held governmental or advisory posts. While these men, and occasionally women, played vital roles as patrons, fun-ders, and systemisers of information, the focus in this book is instead on the contexts in which knowledge was generated and on the people who collected information. Through this reorientation, I present a new interpretation of the commercial and scientific ‘revolutions’ of the period.
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Winterbottom, A. (2016). Introduction: Patronage and the Politics of Knowledge. In: Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380203_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380203_1
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