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Picture of the title page of Edward Waring's book "Remarks on the Uses of Some of the Bazaar Medicines and Common Medical Plants of India"
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Teaching the Intersection of Gender and Race through Colonial Medical Texts

This module focuses on medical texts written by British doctors working in India and their gendered and racial categorization of ailments and diseases.

Picture of the title page of Edward Waring's book "Remarks on the Uses of Some of the Bazaar Medicines and Common Medical Plants of India"
Source

Edward Waring on Borax as medicine in India

Waring published the book in several Indian languages and another publication Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia of India, written by Moodeen Sherriff, an Indian doctor working for the colonial administration, provided the translations and medical plant knowledge in 14 different languages.

Picture of the title page of Edward Waring's book "Remarks on the Uses of Some of the Bazaar Medicines and Common Medical Plants of India"
Source

Edward Waring on Assafœtida as medicine in India

Medical publications appealed to a medical and popular audience in the hopes of providing surgeons with tips on how to obtain similar drugs and medicine in local bazaars which could not be obtained elsewhere.

Painting of The Batavia Castle seen from the Kali Besar West
Source

The Batavia Castle

Seventeenth-century market in the city Batavia (nowadays Jakarta, Indonesia), the central node of Dutch imperial activities in the Indian Ocean region. The Batavia Castle is visible in the background and to its right the Council of Justice with the gallows and whipping post in front of it.

Picture of families in Togo cracking oil palm kernels
Source

Togo farm families cracking oil palm kernels

This photo was part of a short photo series documenting palm oil production in the German colonies in Africa, included in a report by a special oil commission of the German Colonial Society (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft) in 1913.

Clip from Wolff's article on hay's nutritional values
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Agricultural Knowledge in the Late Nineteenth Century

Knowledge knows no national boundaries. Therefore, the history of knowledge also has to move beyond national boundaries to understand how knowledge was produced, moved, and adapted. Telling such a history without the limitations of national boundaries is challenging.

Clip from Wolff's article on hay's nutritional values
Source

Wolff’s justification for omitting hay values

In 1864, for the first time, Emil Wolff did not include hay values alongside nutritional components in the data tables published annually in the calendar. In this accompanying article, Wolff reframed his previous translation into hay values as merely educational.

Image of typed emmerton letter
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Shared Space, Shared Experiences: Transnational Water Management around the Great Lakes

World historians sometimes work within a single sub-field, such as migration history or gender history, but they can also bring sub-fields together, as their perspectives, methods, and subject matter cross boundaries.

View of the Coffee Plantation Marienbosch in Surinam
Source

View of the Coffee Plantation Marienbosch in Surinam

This painting is a view of the Marienbosch coffee plantation along the banks of the Commewijne River in the Dutch colony of Surinam (present-day Suriname). Alongside coffee, the plantation also produced cotton and cocoa. The artist, Willem de Klerk, never visited Surinam.

Sheet 7 of Ancient Courses: Mississippi River Meander Belt Map
Source

Ancient Courses: Mississippi River Meander Belt

This is one of fifteen maps of the Mississippi River created by cartographer and geologist Dr. Harold N. Fisk in 1944. The maps were part of Fisk's Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.