Air Conditioning Jahangir: The 1622 English Great Design, Climate, and the Nature of Global Projects

Abstract

An exploration of an unfulfilled 1622 English global project offers an anthropology of early modern global economic thought. The design included the air conditioning of the Mughal court, piracy, and a submarine treasure-hunting industry. A seemingly Orientalist or colonial attempt to Anglicize India, the design, in fact, aimed to globalize England by drawing on new views concerning the malleability of climate. Later colonialism cannot explain the culture of early seventeenth-century projecting in general and great designs in particular. However, the latter shaped relations of knowledge and power, which continued to operate in later Orientalism and colonialism.

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