Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World

Download or read book Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World written by Anna Winterbottom and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World presents a new interpretation of the development of the English East India Company between 1660 and 1720. The book explores the connections between scholarship, patronage, diplomacy, trade, and colonial settlement in the early modern world. Links of patronage between cosmopolitan writers and collectors and scholars associated with the Royal Society of London and the universities are investigated. Winterbottom shows how innovative works of scholarship – covering natural history, ethnography, theology, linguistics, medicine, and agriculture - were created amid multi-directional struggles for supremacy in Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. The role of non-elite actors including slaves in transferring knowledge and skills between settlements is explored in detail.