Zweisprachige Ausgabe Englisch - Deutsch The Thyssen Lectures are a continuation of a
tradition that the Fritz Thyssen Foundation initiated in 1979 first at various institutions
throughout Germany and then at several universities in Czechia Israel the Russian Federation
Turkey and most recently Greece. The series in the United Kingdom and Ireland will be held ove
a period of four years. Spearheaded by Prof. Christina von Hodenberg director of the German
Historical Insitute London it will be dedicated to the overarching theme of Science Knowledge
and the Legacy of Empire. Worlding India Sumathi Ramaswamy's lecture focuses on a range of
modern disciplinary formations known generally as earth sciences - especially geography and
cartography - and explores how these sciences worlded one specific location on the earth's
surface India as a knowable calculable intelligible and masterable place over the course
of two centuries of British colonial rule. The lecture goes beyond the processes of imperial
world-making: using three examples Ramaswamy shows how the people of India responded to and
engaged with such processes in very different ways and very often on their own terms.
Following Dipesh Chakrabaty she demonstrates that for worldmaking projects in colonial and
postcolonial India the empire's gift of science is indispensable but inadequate.
