Book ID: CBB007862581

Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874 (2019)

unapi

MacGregor, Arthur G. (Author)


Reaktion Books


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 352
Language: English

In colonial India, a range of administrators, soldiers, surveyors, and others invested large parts of their lives in attempting to inventory and comprehend the vast country, its teeming populations, and their myriad customs and religions. Company Curiosities offers the first overview of the remarkable role of the East India Company and its servants in collecting, cataloging, and transmitting from India to Europe a treasure-house of natural specimens and man-made objects—from craft materials to paintings and sculptures, weapons, costumes, jewels, and ornaments. For a time, the East India Company’s own India Museum in London led the way in presenting their findings and establishing for a larger public the characteristic features of a subcontinent that would become the heart of Britain’s worldwide empire. Later, when the Great Exhibition and its successors redefined the style and the scale of presentation of the world’s commercial and industrial processes, the Company’s talented curators (now under their new masters, the India Office) continued to play a key role in articulating these materials. Meanwhile, Company employees returning from years of service diffused a taste for all things Indian. Superbly illustrated, Company Curiosities reveals how these diverse players invented the look and feel of India for those who had never ventured abroad.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Herman Reichenbach (2020) Review of "Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874". Archives of Natural History (pp. 208-209). unapi

Review Roelof van Gelder (2019) Review of "Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 824-825). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB007862581/

Similar Citations

Article Lucas, A. M.; Lucas, P. J.; (2014)
Natural History “Collectors”: Exploring the Ambiguities (/isis/citation/CBB001321122/)

Article Daszkiewicz, Piotr; Edel, Philippe; (2014)
The Will of Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776--1827), an Interesting Nineteenth-Century Natural History Document (/isis/citation/CBB001321134/)

Book Longair, Sarah; McAleer, John; (2012)
Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience (/isis/citation/CBB001201464/)

Article Murphy, Kathleen S.; (2013)
Collecting Slave Traders: James Petiver, Natural History, and the British Slave Trade (/isis/citation/CBB001320636/)

Article Mascha Hansen; (2022)
Queen Charlotte's scientific collections and natural history networks (/isis/citation/CBB932302959/)

Chapter Achim, Miruna; (2013)
Maleta de doble fondo y colecciones de antigüedades, Ciudad de México, ca. 1830 (/isis/citation/CBB001500466/)

Article Mearns, Richard; Gouraud, Christophe; Chevrier, Laurent; (2015)
The Identity of Richard of Richard's Pipit (Anthus richardi Vieillot, 1818) (/isis/citation/CBB001500440/)

Article Karl Schulze-Hagen; Tim R. Birkhead; (2023)
“Der fluglose Alk”: Johann Friedrich Naumann’s 1844 account of Pinguinus impennis (great auk) (/isis/citation/CBB688828890/)

Article Simon Ville; Claire Wright; Jude Philp; (2020)
Macleay’s Choice: Transacting the Natural History Trade in the Nineteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB456527142/)

Article Schmutzer, Kurt; (2012)
Metamorphosis between Field and Museum: Collections in the Making (/isis/citation/CBB001210371/)

Article Jarvis, Charles E.; Cooper, Joanne H.; (2014)
Maidstone's Woodpecker – an Unexpected Bird Specimen in the Herbarium of Sir Hans Sloane (/isis/citation/CBB001202217/)

Authors & Contributors
Wright, Claire
Stanislav Strekopytov
Karl Schulze-Hagen
Philp, Jude
Guy M. Sechrist
Watson, Mark F.
Concepts
Natural history
Collections
Specimen exchange
Biological specimens
Specimens
Collectors and collecting
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
20th century, early
Early modern
20th century, late
Places
Netherlands
Germany
India
Great Britain
Sydney (Australia)
Antarctica
Institutions
Maison Verreaux
East India Company (English)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment