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SUMMARY:The natural history of the Napoleonic Wars: collecting at the East
  India Company c. 1798–1820 - Jessica Ratcliff (Cornell University and Y
 ale-NUS College)
DTSTART:20161017T120000Z
DTEND:20161017T130000Z
UID:TALK67014@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Edwin Rose
DESCRIPTION:At the turn of the nineteenth century\, at its headquarters in
  the City of London\, the East India Company established a new museum. By 
 mid-century\, the museum at India House had grown to contain one of Europe
 's most extensive collections of the natural history\, arts and sciences o
 f Asia. This talk uses the museum's early natural history collections to e
 xplore the material relationship between scientific practice and imperial 
 conflict. I will first describe some of the ways in which the Asian theatr
 es of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars would shape the scope and scal
 e of the East India Company's collections. I will then consider one partic
 ular case: the British invasion of Dutch Java (1811) the collecting activi
 ties of Thomas Horsfield and Stamford Raffles\, and the uses to which thos
 e Javanese collections were put. Such cases raise the question of how and 
 why the practices of war came to encompass natural history surveys during 
 this period. I will conclude by offering a few tentative answers to that q
 uestion.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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