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Terrestrial Lessons

The Conquest of the World as Globe

Sumathi Ramaswamy author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:3rd Nov '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Terrestrial Lessons cover

Why and how do debates about the form and disposition of our Earth shape enlightened subjectivity and secular worldliness in colonial modernity? Sumathi Ramaswamy explores this question for British India with the aid of the terrestrial globe which since the sixteenth century has circulated as a worldly symbol, a scientific instrument, and not least an educational tool for inculcating planetary consciousness. In Terrestrial Lessons, Ramaswamy provides the first in-depth analysis of the globe's history in and impact on the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era and its aftermath. Drawing on a wide array of archival sources, she delineates its transformation from a thing of distinction possessed by elite men into that mass-produced commodity used in classrooms worldwide the humble school globe. Traversing the length and breadth of British India, Terrestrial Lessons is an unconventional history of this master object of pedagogical modernity that will fascinate historians of cartography, science, and Asian studies.

ISBN: 9780226476575

Dimensions: 26mm x 18mm x 3mm

Weight: 964g

416 pages