000			01287nam a22001577a 4500
999			_c76175 _d76175
020			_a9780823270682
082			_a338.926 R1374 A _b104936
100			_aRajani Sudan
245			_aThe Alchemy of Empire: _bAbject Materials and the Technologies of Colonialism
250			_a1st ed
260			_aNew York _bFordham University Press _c2016
300			_a223
500			_aThe Alchemy of Empire unravels the non-European origins of Enlightenment science. Focusing on the abject materials of empire-building, this study traces the genealogies of substances like mud, mortar, ice, and paper, as well as forms of knowledge like inoculation. Showing how East India Company employees deployed the paradigm of alchemy in order to make sense of the new worlds they confronted, Rajani Sudan argues that the Enlightenment was born largely out of Europe’s (and Britain’s) sense of insecurity and inferiority in the early modern world. Plumbing the depths of the imperial archive, Sudan uncovers the history of the British Enlightenment in the literary artifacts of the long eighteenth century, from the correspondence of the East India Company and the papers of the Royal Society to the poetry of Alexander Pope and the novels of Jane Austen.
650			_aTechnology in literature
942			_cBK