In this chapter, we will enquire about the forms assumed by knowledge accumulation and more generally about the encounters between knowledge and capital in colonial settings considering both the theoretical issues they raise and some relevant historical instances taken from colonial history. The first form of knowledge accumulation that is worth to be analysed is extraction, insofar as it has been discussed in the last years in the framework of the recent discussion of extractivism and neo-extractivism1, mainly under the name of cognitive or epistemic extractivism2.