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Information, Scholarship, and the East India Company Settlements 1660-1720S Winterbottom, Anna E

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Information, Scholarship, and the East India Company Settlements 1660-1720S Winterbottom, Anna E Company culture: information, scholarship, and the East India Company settlements 1660-1720s Winterbottom, Anna E. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/376 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] 1 Company Culture: Information, Scholarship, and the East India Company Settlements 1660-1720s Anna E. Winterbottom Submitted for PhD examination University of London July 2010 2 ABSTRACT I explore how knowledge was created and circulated in and between the settlements of the early English East India Company. I aim: to demonstrate connections between scholarship and early colonialism; to highlight the role of non-elite actors in transferring skills and techniques; and to map global knowledge networks based on systems of patronage that cut across national, ethnic, and social boundaries. Chapter 1 uses the life of Samuel Baron, a half-Dutch, half-Vietnamese factor, spy, and broker for the EIC, client of the rulers of Siam and Tonkin, and author of the Description of Tonqueen to examine the importance of passeurs culturels or go-betweens to both the European trading companies and Asian rulers in the period and their role in transmitting geographical and ethnographic information. Chapter 2 examines the local and international botanical and medical networks of two Company surgeons in Madras, based on collections in the Natural History Museum and the surgeons' correspondence with the apothecary James Petiver. Chapter 3 looks in detail at the development of English scholarship on the Malay language: moving from wordlists and manuscript grammars to the first bilingual English-Malay dictionary, published in 1701. I use the texts to examine the early Company's policies of language-learning and teaching and the theoretical and practical basis of linguistic projects in the period. Chapter 4 follows the movement of a travel text, Robert Knox's Historical Relation of Ceylon, with its author on a series of later voyages. I explore the practical uses of such texts to inform bio-prospecting and the transplantation of crops in the Company's search for island bases in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Chapter 5 examines slaves' roles in the transmission of botanical, medical, and cultural knowledge between the 'plantations' of St Helena (South Atlantic) and Bencoulen (Sumatra), through both their work and their resistance. 3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1: Passeurs culturels in the making of the East India Company: Samuel Baron (fl. 1645- 1695) and the Company settlements in East Asia .............................................................................31 CHAPTER 2: Medical and Botanical Networks of Madras c. 1688-1713.........................................70 ...........................................................................................................................................................82 CHAPTER 3: Language Learning and the East India Company: English Scholarship on Malay in the late Seventeenth Century ...........................................................................................................116 CHAPTER 4: Using the Historical Relation of Ceylon: Bioprospecting and Transplantation .......160 CHAPTER 5: 'Improving' people and plants in the Company 'plantations': scholarship and slavery in St Helena and Bencoulen c. 1673-1720.......................................................................................193 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................233 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................242 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: Samuel Baron's account of the trade of India, written from Fort St George in 1695 ..........................................................................................................................................................281 APPENDIX 2: Materia medica in Samuel Browne’s volumes of plants sent from Madras ...........289 APPENDIX 3: Select correspondence of Thomas Bowrey .............................................................313 APPENDIX 4: Robert Knox's 'Tonqueen' Journal ..........................................................................330 APPENDIX 5: Overview of resources in Indian and Sri Lankan Archives for the History of the English East India Company, 1599-c.1720......................................................................................337 APPENDIX 6: Introduction to the Seventeenth Century Records in the St Helena Archives.........352 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES John Ogilby, A New Map of Asia (1673), National Maritime Museum, London.............................29 Detail from draft illustration for Baron, Description, Plate 2: The City of Cha Cho, the metropolis of Tonqueen, the Royal Society..............................................................................................................61 'The Town of Jambee', anonymous map probably produced in the region sometime in the late seventeenth century showing Jambi in Sumatra, Maritime Museum, Rotterdam..............................61 Baron, Description, Plate 8: 'The Boua or King of Tonqueen when He Gives Audience': left, original and right, copy in published work with perspective altered ..............................................................62 Joan Blaeu, Kaert van de Bocht van Tonkin, 1663, Maritime Museum, Rotterdam..........................64 4 Detail from Daniel Tavernier, Carte: Fait sur les lieux en plusiers voiages a fait au Tonquin, in J. B. Tavernier, Six Voyages (1676), Bodleian Library..............................................................................64 Herman Moll, A Plan of Fort St. George and the City of Madras, 1726............................................82 ..........................................................................................................................................................101 Bark of Strychnos nux vomica, mistakenly identified as cinchona, Sloane 278, vegetable substances, Sloane Herbarium, National History Museum..............................................................110 Petiver, 'Monstrum PHILIP.', Gazophylacci Naturae & Artis, Tab XLV, no. 4 ...............................113 The 'Chinese Compass', foldout in the last page of the British Library copy of Thomas Bowrey, Dictionary English-Malayo, Malayo-English (British Library, shelfmark 68 c. 12) ......................131 The Chinese Compass in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford (MHS 44055)...............131 An orangutan couple imagined by Arnoldus Montanus, Atlas Japannensis, trans by John Ogilby (1670)...............................................................................................................................................132 An imagined scene in which the Historical Relation of Ceylon is presented to Rajasingha II of Kandy from Simon de Vries trans, t'Eyland Ceylon in syn binnenste (Utrecht: by Wilhelm Broedelet, 1692)...............................................................................................................................173 Robert Knox, detail from 'A new map of the Kingdom of Candy Uda, in the Island of Ceylon (1681), taken from EEBO Wing / K742 Copy from: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery …......................................................................................................................................................175 Detail from Sieur de l'Isle, Carte de l'Isle de Ceylon (1701), National Archives of India...............175 Detail from 'Map of Ceylon...by order of the late Rt Hon’ble and Aurstere Ryklof van Goens’, published by Johannes van Keulen (c. 1710-12), Leiden University Library..................................176 Portrait of Sir John Chardin and an unnamed slave, Museum for the History of Science, Oxford. 194 Johan Nieuhof, 'St Helena', Leiden University Library....................................................................201 Official-sanctioned slave transfers ≥50 where numbers are given, c. 1680-1710............................211 A view of the Samrat Yantra at Jaipur..............................................................................................234 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to my supervisors, Professors Lisa Jardine and Felipe Fernández-Armesto for all their help and support. I owe particular thanks to Lisa Jardine for the inspiration to investigate the lives of Robert Knox and Samuel Baron and to Felipe Fernández-Armesto for his help in achieving a global perspective. I also owe many thanks to Professor Deepak Kumar for acting as my Research Guide during my affiliation with Jawaharlal Nehru University and for his advice about my work and help identifying materials in Indian archives. I am grateful to Domanic Wujastyk for allowing me to sit in on his MA class at UCL's Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. I acknowledge with thanks
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