Miller Center | Collecting, Colonial Science, and the East India Company’s Library- Museum, 1757-1858 | Jessica Ratcliff
Miller Center | Collecting, Colonial Science, and the East India Company’s Library- Museum, 1757-1858 | Jessica Ratcliff
This talk investigates the changing patterns of knowledge resource management at the British East India Company. It covers the years between the Company’s takeover of Bengal in 1757 and the loss of its monopoly rights in 1833.
At the beginning of the period, the Company generally depended upon individuals for the historical, linguistic, navigational, botanical, medical and other sciences upon which their operations depended. By the end of the period, the Company had taken over the direct management and production of many domains of colonial science. Along the way, the Company would become a key institution of science in London, establishing around 1800 a library, museum and two colleges in Britain.
In this talk, Ratcliff will first give an overview of the changing structure and geography of science under the Company. She will then focus on the debate over whether and how the Company’s library-museum should be rendered a “public” resource after 1833. Overall, the talk has three aims: 1) to clarify the role played by the Company in the creation of Britain’s national museum collections; 2) to explore the Company as an institution of “colonial science” in Britain; and 3) to further develop the social history of the Company in Britain, particularly in relation to its complex status as both a corporation and a state.
Jessica Ratcliff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. She is the author of The Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain.