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Books by Anna Winterbottom
Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World presents a new reading of the English East... more Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World presents a new reading of the English East India Company 1660-1720. It shows how innovative works covering natural history, ethnography, theology, linguistics, medicine, and agriculture - were created amid early modern struggles for supremacy in Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic.
The East India Company and the Natural World is the first work to explore the deep and lasting im... more The East India Company and the Natural World is the first work to explore the deep and lasting impacts of the largest colonial trading company, the British East India Company, on the natural environment. The EIC both contributed to and recorded environmental change during the first era of globalization. From the small island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and as far off as New Zealand, the Company presence profoundly altered the environment by introducing plants and animals, felling forests, and redirecting rivers. The threats of famine and disease encouraged experiments with agriculture and the recording of the virtues of medicinal plants. The EIC records of the weather, the soils, and the flora provide modern climate scientists with invaluable data. The contributors – drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines - use the lens of the Company to illuminate the relationship between colonial capital and the changing environment between 1600 and 1857.
Papers by Anna Winterbottom
Asian Medicine, 2021
The practice of medicine and healing is always accompanied by a range of paraphernalia, from pill... more The practice of medicine and healing is always accompanied by a range of paraphernalia, from pillboxes to instruments to clothing. Yet such things have rarely attracted the attention of historians of medicine. Here, I draw on perspectives from art history and religious studies to ask how these objects relate, in practical and symbolic terms, to practices of healing. In other words, what is the connection between medical culture and material culture? I focus on craft objects relating to medicine and healing in Lanka during the Kandyan period (ca. 1595–1815) in museum collections in Canada and Sri Lanka. I ask what the objects can tell us, first, about early modern Lankan medicine and healing and, second, about late nineteenth- and twentieth-century efforts to reconstruct tradition. Finally, I explore what studying these objects might add to current debates about early modern globalization in the context of both material culture and medicine.
British Journal for the History of Science, 2019
The early East India Company (EIC) had a profound effect on London, filling the British capital w... more The early East India Company (EIC) had a profound effect on London, filling the British capital with new things, ideas and people; altering its streets; and introducing exotic plants and animals. Company commodities – from saltpetre to tea to opium – were natural products and the EIC sought throughout the period to understand how to produce and control them. In doing so, the company amassed information, designed experiments and drew on the expertise of people in the settlements and of individuals and institutions in London. Frequent collaborators in London included the Royal Society and the Society of Apothecaries. Seeking success in the settlements and patronage in London, company servants amassed large amounts of data concerning natural objects and artificial practices. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, company scholars and their supporters in London sought to counter critiques of the EIC by demonstrating the utility to the nation of the objects and ideas they brought home. The EIC transformed itself several times between 1600 and 1800. Nonetheless, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its knowledge culture was characterized by reliance on informal networks that linked the settlements with one another and with London.
British Journal for the History of Science, Jan 1, 2009
African Studies Review, Jan 1, 2009
This article reviews campaigns against female genital cutting (FGC) directed at Maasai communitie... more This article reviews campaigns against female genital cutting (FGC) directed at Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. The authors argue that campaigns against FGC using educational, health, legal, and human rights–based approaches are at times ineffective and counterproductive when they frame the practice as a “tradition” rooted in a “primitive” and unchanging culture. We suggest that development interventions that do not address local contexts of FGC, including the complex politics and history of interventions designed to eradicate it, can in fact reify and reinscribe the practice as central to Maasai cultural identity.
Book Chapters by Anna Winterbottom
Damodaran, Vinita, Anna Winterbottom, and Alan Lester. The East India Company and the Natural World. (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)., 2014
Fusaro, Maria, and Amélia Polónia eds. Maritime History As Global History. St. John's, Nfld: International Maritime Economic History Association, , 2010
Book Reviews by Anna Winterbottom
Other by Anna Winterbottom
Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World presents a new reading of the English East... more Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World presents a new reading of the English East India Company 1660-1720. It shows how innovative works covering natural history, ethnography, theology, linguistics, medicine, and agriculture - were created amid early modern struggles for supremacy in Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic.
The East India Company and the Natural World is the first work to explore the deep and lasting im... more The East India Company and the Natural World is the first work to explore the deep and lasting impacts of the largest colonial trading company, the British East India Company, on the natural environment. The EIC both contributed to and recorded environmental change during the first era of globalization. From the small island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and as far off as New Zealand, the Company presence profoundly altered the environment by introducing plants and animals, felling forests, and redirecting rivers. The threats of famine and disease encouraged experiments with agriculture and the recording of the virtues of medicinal plants. The EIC records of the weather, the soils, and the flora provide modern climate scientists with invaluable data. The contributors – drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines - use the lens of the Company to illuminate the relationship between colonial capital and the changing environment between 1600 and 1857.
Asian Medicine, 2021
The practice of medicine and healing is always accompanied by a range of paraphernalia, from pill... more The practice of medicine and healing is always accompanied by a range of paraphernalia, from pillboxes to instruments to clothing. Yet such things have rarely attracted the attention of historians of medicine. Here, I draw on perspectives from art history and religious studies to ask how these objects relate, in practical and symbolic terms, to practices of healing. In other words, what is the connection between medical culture and material culture? I focus on craft objects relating to medicine and healing in Lanka during the Kandyan period (ca. 1595–1815) in museum collections in Canada and Sri Lanka. I ask what the objects can tell us, first, about early modern Lankan medicine and healing and, second, about late nineteenth- and twentieth-century efforts to reconstruct tradition. Finally, I explore what studying these objects might add to current debates about early modern globalization in the context of both material culture and medicine.
British Journal for the History of Science, 2019
The early East India Company (EIC) had a profound effect on London, filling the British capital w... more The early East India Company (EIC) had a profound effect on London, filling the British capital with new things, ideas and people; altering its streets; and introducing exotic plants and animals. Company commodities – from saltpetre to tea to opium – were natural products and the EIC sought throughout the period to understand how to produce and control them. In doing so, the company amassed information, designed experiments and drew on the expertise of people in the settlements and of individuals and institutions in London. Frequent collaborators in London included the Royal Society and the Society of Apothecaries. Seeking success in the settlements and patronage in London, company servants amassed large amounts of data concerning natural objects and artificial practices. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, company scholars and their supporters in London sought to counter critiques of the EIC by demonstrating the utility to the nation of the objects and ideas they brought home. The EIC transformed itself several times between 1600 and 1800. Nonetheless, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its knowledge culture was characterized by reliance on informal networks that linked the settlements with one another and with London.
British Journal for the History of Science, Jan 1, 2009
African Studies Review, Jan 1, 2009
This article reviews campaigns against female genital cutting (FGC) directed at Maasai communitie... more This article reviews campaigns against female genital cutting (FGC) directed at Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. The authors argue that campaigns against FGC using educational, health, legal, and human rights–based approaches are at times ineffective and counterproductive when they frame the practice as a “tradition” rooted in a “primitive” and unchanging culture. We suggest that development interventions that do not address local contexts of FGC, including the complex politics and history of interventions designed to eradicate it, can in fact reify and reinscribe the practice as central to Maasai cultural identity.
Damodaran, Vinita, Anna Winterbottom, and Alan Lester. The East India Company and the Natural World. (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)., 2014
Fusaro, Maria, and Amélia Polónia eds. Maritime History As Global History. St. John's, Nfld: International Maritime Economic History Association, , 2010