The first protestant missionaries as European naturalists in India competitors of the Jesuits in the 18th Century

• Autores: Brigitte Hoppe
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 344-348
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • At the beginning of the 18th century (1706) the first protestant missionaries were sent to South India with the aid of a contract between the ‘Waisenhaus’-foundation in Halle (Saale) and the King of Denmark. They had different contacts with Jesuits, the religious competitors but also supporters of activities with the same aim.

    Priests of both groups, trained at European universities, and in particular the protestant missionaries supported by missionary physicians sometimes, were scholars in many fields. They published Tamil translations of Christian religious texts and comparative textbooks on linguistics.

    In one field the first protestant missionaries in India surpassed the Jesuits: Some of them became specialists in natural history and made extensive collections of Indian natural objects, which activities remained nearly unnoticed by the history of science until our days. The 18th century missionaries in India remained in correspondence with eminent European naturalists, who highly estimated the natural objects of the overseas regions, sending recent European publications on natural history to India, in order to support the self-training of the scholars, who trained also their disciples in Natural History in the overseas country. In the counter-move these sent their collections and observations to European partners who became sponsors for the missionary work. The historian states many ways of knowledge exchange between Europe and India from the 18th to 19th centuries and find traces of the spread of Indian natural history collections and manuscripts through whole Europe. In this way, these activities furthered much the knowledge of Indian civilization and the development of natural history in Europe from the 18th to the 19th centuries, during decades before Indian countries became members of the British Empire