Anna Winterbottom. Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World

Abstract

Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World portrays the wide variety of actors and knowledge practices involved in the development of the English East India Company (EIC) and its network of settlements in Asia between 1660 and 1720. Set in the crucial period of the turn of the eighteenth century, this work bridges early European forays into the Indian Ocean with their later imperial efforts, and places one of the most formative moments in the history of science in global and cross-cultural settings. In the late seventeenth century, the EIC was but a marginal political and economic force seeking to establish a foothold in Asia. In these efforts, the Company looked to build networks of patronage both at home and abroad, and form associations with a variety of agents ranging from members of the Royal Society to non-European mediators. In her book, Anna Winterbottom elegantly brings together the different worlds that the EIC’s endeavours connected, examining the processes at stake through the lens of a cultural history of the production of ‘useful’ knowledge in the early EIC settlements.