Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain’s Second Scientific Revolution

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Event Description 

In the nineteenth century, an ambitious new library and museum for Asian arts, sciences and natural history was established in the City of London, within the corporate headquarters of the East India Company. This library-museum, as well as two new colleges on the outskirts of London, were funded with taxes from British India and run by the East India Company. The establishment of major institutions for education and science marked a new chapter in the history of knowledge at the East India Company. Using the case of these institutions, this talk investigates the changing patterns of knowledge resource management at the British East India Company in the years between 1757-1858. Jessica Ratcliff will show how the growth of science at the East India Company depended on peculiar aspects of its monopoly form. She will then show how Company science became part of the cultural fabric of science in Britain, and will argue that, as the Company’s monopoly collapsed and its property was absorbed by the British state, British India’s “public science” became British “public science,” feeding into Britain’s rising preeminence on the scientific world stage.

Event Speaker

Jessica Ratcliff, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University

Event Information

Free and open to the public; registration required. Contact scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or historyofscience@nyu.edu for questions. 

This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.

Sponsoring Organizations:

• Columbia University in the City of New York
• NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study
• The Graduate Center, City University of New York
• The New York Academy of Medicine
• The New York Academy of Sciences

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