Terrestrial Lessons: The Conquest of the World as Globe

by Sumathi Ramaswamy

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.

416 pages, Hardcover

Published October 3, 2017

Reviews

[Neena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the book Terrestrial Lessons is officially a book on how the Globe was introduced in India, it is more about how the british introduced their education system in India, so that the latest advances in science and geography were taught to students all over India. Like the indian intelligence and security agencies who are often extremely irrational in their behavior, before the east india company (EIC) and the british came to India , the rulers of india had limited knowledge and largely believed that the world was flat. It was the british who introduced the concept of the globe in the various schools and also to many rulers who wished to update themselves with the latest technologies. As the indian government is openly involved in identity theft, india regresses to the pre british era, the book gives interesting insights into the changes in the education system which may be reversed in future as brahmin atrocities increase in India