Speaker: Niklas Thode Jensen (PhD, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, European University Institute, Florence, Italy)
Organiser: Department of Social Sciences of the IFP and Pondicherry University.
Abstract
From their arrival in Tranquebar at the beginning of the eighteenth century the missionaries of the protestant Danish-Halle mission were engaging with many different kinds of knowledge present in Tamil society and with the local natural environment. This paper will focus on the activities in the field of natural history or science, especially medical botany and chemistry, from the time of the arrival of the first mission doctor in 1730. The establishment of the office of mission doctor appears to be a decisive moment for the development of the connection between the Mission and scientific enquiry. As a case study, it presents a window into the complex connections between medicine, science, trade and religion in the early eighteenth century both locally in South India and in the global colonial networks. The case will show how new scientific knowledge about the colonial "periphery" India was constructed both in dialogue and competition with Tamil experts and informants, and at the same time addressing concerns and interests coming out of the scientific "centers" of Europe. In this way, the new scientific knowledge about Indian nature was not just collected locally ; it was made in a complex global process.