In this original and deeply researched book, Sumathi Ramaswamy wonders if the globe, the spherical model of the earth, has a similar history everywhere and, upon introduction as a pedagogical prop, the same kinds of effects. In what might be called an object-oriented history, Ramaswamy seeks to address this question by focusing on the abundant and diverse historical archive of British India from roughly 1700 forward. Terrestrial Lessons is organized as a spatial and temporal tour across the subcontinent, beginning in Madras in the late 1700s. It then moves north along the Ganges valley as the British expand westward, then to Bombay and finally Calcutta and its environs. As she tracks the paths of manmade globes, Ramaswamy offers a new and richly annotated narrative of the South Asian passage from colonial to postcolonial modernity.
In the early stages of the tour, the spherical globe and its material allies, such as...
