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 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.
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