Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600-1874

Hardback

Main Details

Title Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600-1874
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Arthur MacGregor
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:352
Dimensions(mm): Height 250,Width 190
Category/GenreAcquisitions and collection development
British and Irish History
Asian and Middle Eastern history
ISBN/Barcode 9781789140033
Audience
General
Illustrations 160 illustrations, 100 in colour

Publishing Details

Publisher Reaktion Books
Imprint Reaktion Books
Publication Date 19 November 2018
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

For nearly three hundred years, the East India Company dominated British trade and relations with Asia. It made handsome profits for shareholders but also provided collectors in Europe with natural specimens and man-made rarities that were prized for their scientific, aesthetic or cultural value. In India an array of administrators, soldiers, surveyors spent much of their lives attempting to inventory and to comprehend this vast country, its teeming populations and its myriad rituals and wildlife: nearly forty species of mammals and over 120 species of birds were discovered in the Katmandu valley alone; astonishing wall paintings from the fifth-century were unearthed in caves at Ajanta; and spectacular fossil fauna arrived from the Siwalik Hills. Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600-1874 offers the first-ever overview of the remarkable role of the East India Company and its servants in collecting and showcasing a treasure-house of natural specimens and man-made objects - craft materials, paintings and sculptures, weapons, costumes, jewels and ornaments - that established the look and the feel of India for those who had never ventured abroad. Arthur MacGregor tells the stories behind the remarkable discoveries and collections, and those responsible for them, and their impact on natural science, commerce and industry, and personal taste. 'Company Curiosities significantly enhances our understanding of colonial collecting in India and the presentation of these collections in Britain.' - Felix Driver, Professor of Human Geography at University of London

Author Biography

Arthur MacGregor is a former archaeologist and was Senior Curator at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He is a founding editor of the Journal of the History of Collections and the author of Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn (1985), Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (2007) and Animal Encounters (Reaktion, 2012).

Reviews

`Company Curiosities significantly enhances our understanding of colonial collecting in India and the presentation of these collections in Britain.' - Felix Driver, Professor of Human Geography at University of London