Terrestrial Lessons: The Conquest of the World as Globe (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226476575)

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.

Author: Sumathi Ramaswamy
ISBN-10: 022647657X
ISBN-13: 9780226476575
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 10/03/2017
Pages: 416
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.10lbs
Size: 10.30h x 7.20w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2018