The Circulation of Knowledge Between Britain, India and China


Book Description

In The Circulation of Knowledge Between Britain, India and China, twelve scholars examine how knowledge, things and people moved within, and between, the East and the West from the early modern period to the twentieth century. The collection starts by looking at the ways and means that knowledge circulated, first in Europe, but then beyond to India and China. It engages the knowledge and encounters of those Europeans as they moved across the globe. It participates in the attempt to open up more nuanced and balanced trajectories of colonial and post-colonial encounters. By focusing on exchange, translation, and resistance, the authors bring into the spotlight many "bit-players" and things originally relegated to the margins in the development of late modern science. Contributors include Karen Smith, Larry Stewart, Savrithri Preetha Nair, Jan Golinski, Arun Bala, Jonathan Topham, Khyati Nagar, Yang Haiyan, Fa-ti Fan, Grace Yen Shen, Jahnavi Phalkey, Veena Rao, and Sundar Sarukkai.




The British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution 1700–1852


Book Description

The British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution 1700–1852 presents a fundamental reassessment of the contribution of patenting to British industrialisation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It shows that despite the absence of legislative reform, the British patent system was continually evolving and responding to the needs of an industrialising economy. Inventors were able to obtain and enforce patent rights with relative ease. This placed Britain in an exceptional position. Until other countries began to enact patent laws in the 1790s, it was the only country where inventors were frequently able to appropriate returns from obtaining intellectual property rights, thus encouraging them to develop the new technology industrialisation required.