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5 - Systematic Possession

from Part II - From Company Science to Public Science, 1813–1858

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2025

Jessica Ratcliff
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

The Company’s remarkable ability to control access to Asia, and to dominate the accumulation of information about Asia in Britain, had, by the 1830s, given Company science a prominent role in shaping the material culture of science in Britain. The Company’s influence was now exercised not only through restriction and protection but also through selectively opening access and sharing resources. The Company’s formal monopoly was gone, but Company science now operated within a different social configuration of access and exclusion: the narrow social networks of club-society cultures of science. This selective opening up also coincided, as Chapter 6 will make clear, with even more radical changes to the Company’s remaining monopoly rights and its sovereignty with respect to the Crown. In consequence, even within Britain, there was a growing debate and disagreement over the nature and scope of access to the Company’s library and museum, including accusations that the Company was maintaining an illegal knowledge monopoly.

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Chapter
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Monopolizing Knowledge
The East India Company and Britain's Second Scientific Revolution
, pp. 147 - 178
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Systematic Possession
  • Jessica Ratcliff, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: Monopolizing Knowledge
  • Online publication: 02 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009379526.006
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  • Systematic Possession
  • Jessica Ratcliff, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: Monopolizing Knowledge
  • Online publication: 02 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009379526.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Systematic Possession
  • Jessica Ratcliff, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: Monopolizing Knowledge
  • Online publication: 02 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009379526.006
Available formats
×