Jessica Ratcliff - Monopolizing Knowledge

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.

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

Contact aGlzdG9yeW9mc2NpZW5jZSB8IG55dSAhIGVkdQ== and c2NpZW5jZWFuZHNvY2lldHkgfCBjb2x1bWJpYSAhIGVkdQ== with any 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

Also check out other Nonprofit events in New York, Arts events in New York.