Colonial botany : science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world / edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Schiebinger, Londa L.

Swan, Claudia.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Botany, Economic--Europe--History.

Botany, Economic.

Botany, Economic--Economic aspects--Europe--History.

Botany, Economic--Political aspects--Europe--History.

Plant introduction--Europe--History.

Plant introduction.

History.

Botany, Economic--Political aspects.

Europe.

Physical Description:

vi, 346 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Summary:

In the early modern world, botany was big science and big business, critical to Europe's national and trade ambitions. Tracing the dynamic relationships among plants, peoples, states, and economies over the course of three centuries, this collection of scholarly essays offers a lively challenge to a historiography that has emphasized the rise of modern botany as a story of taxonomies and "pure" systems of classification. Charting a new map of botany along colonial coordinates, reaching from Europe to the New World, India, Asia, and other points on the globe, Colonial Botany explores how the study, naming, cultivation, and marketing of rare and beautiful plants resulted from and shaped European voyages, conquests, global trade, and scientific exploration.

From the earliest voyages of discovery, naturalists sought profitable plants for king and country, personal and corporate gain. Costly spices and valuable medicinal plants such as nutmeg, tobacco, sugar, Peruvian bark, peppers, cloves, cinnamon, and tea ranked prominently among the motivations for European voyages of discovery. At the same time, colonial profits depended largely on natural historical exploration and the precise identification and effective cultivation of profitable plants. This volume breaks new ground by treating the development of the science of botany in its colonial context and situating the early modern exploration of the plant world at the volatile nexus of science, commerce, and state politics. Written by scholars as international as their subjects, Colonial Botany uncovers an emerging cultural history of plants and botanical practices in Europe and its possessions.

Contents:

Part I Colonial Governance and Botanical Practices

1 Dominion, Demonstration, and Domination: Religious Doctrine, Territorial Politics, and French Plant Collection / Chandra Mukerji 19

2 Walnuts at Hudson Bay, Coral Reefs in Gotland: The Colonialism of Linnaean Botany / Staffan Muller-Wille 34

3 Mission Gardens: Natural History and Global Expansion, 1720-1820 / Michael T. Bravo 49

4 Gathering for the Republic: Botany in Early Republic America / Andrew J. Lewis 66

Part II Translating Indigenous, Creole, and European Botanies: Local Knowledge(s), Global Science

5 Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica / Daniela Bleichmar 83

6 Global Economies and Local Knowledge in the East Indies: Jacobus Bontius Learns the Facts of Nature / Harold J. Cook 100

7 Prospecting for Drugs: European Naturalists in the West Indies / Londa Schiebinger 119

8 Linnaean Botany and Spanish Imperial Biopolitics / Antonio Lafuente, Nuria Valverde 134

9 How Derivative Was Humboldt? Microcosmic Nature Narratives in Early Modern Spanish America and the (Other) Origins of Humboldt's Ecological Sensibilities / Jorge Canizares-Esguerra 148

Part III Cash Crops: Making and Remaking Nature

10 The Conquest of Spice and the Dutch Colonial Imaginary: Seen and Unseen in the Visual Culture of Trade / Julie Berger Hochstrasser 169

11 Of Nutmegs and Botanists: The Colonial Cultivation of Botanical Identity / E. C. Spary 187

12 Out of Africa: Colonial Rice History in the Black Atlantic / Judith Carney 204

Part IV Technologies of Accumulation

13 Collecting Naturalia in the Shadow of Early Modern Dutch Trade / Claudia Swan 223

14 Accounting for the Natural World: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Field / Anke te Heesen 237

15 Surgeons, Fakirs, Merchants, and Craftspeople: Making L'Empereur's Jardin in Early Modern South Asia / Kapil Raj 252

16 Measurable Difference: Botany, Climate, and the Gardener's Thermometer in Eighteenth-Century France / Marie-Noelle Bourguet 270.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [287]-330) and index.

ISBN:

0812238273

OCLC:

55633678