At this self-appointed end of history, we may wonder why yet one
more history is necessary, or even desirable. Drayton, Associate
Professor of History at the University of Virginia, has no doubt,
as he says in the epilogue to this book. 'The story I have followed
through five centuries tells of your origins', he says. The story
is the history of botany, and of the role of Kew Gardens, from its
beginnings as a pleasure palace for George III and his Queen
Caroline, like many throughout Europe, in the study and
exploitation of the fruits of empire. Drayton tells of how botany,
and the botanic gardens, helped to spin the great web of commerce,
military adventure and administration that went along with empire,
and what that imperial arrogance meant to the colonized, put to
work in plantations, all sense of culture crushed. The result is a
clear exposition of the mind of empire, told with a storyteller's
sureness of narrative and rhythm, and illustrated with plates of
contemporary woodcuts and paintings that make the book a treat to
flick through, as well as instructive to read. Near the end of
Drayton's history of English imperialism, sound the ominous
rumblings of another empire in the making, as British interests in
the Caribbean are threatened by the trading power of the United
States. Still, as Drayton reminds us in his epilogue, free trade
has been the goal of all bullying empires. This timely reminder of
how science and empire serve each other's interests, in this new
age of botanical imperialism by stealth, easily qualifies as my
book of the year. Review by ALEX BENZIE (Kirkus UK)
'Nature's Government' is a daring attempt to juxtapose the
histories of Britain, western science, and imperialism. It shows
how colonial expansion, from the age of Alexander the Great to the
twentieth century, led to complex kinds of knowledge. Science, and
botany in particular, was fed by information culled from the
exploration of the globe. At the same time science was useful to
imperialism: it guided the exploitation of exotic environments and
made conquest seem necessary, legitimate, and beneficial. Drayton
traces the history of this idea of 'improvement' from its Christian
agrarian origins in the sixteenth century to its inclusion in
theories of enlightened despotism. It was as providers of
legitimacy, as much as of universal knowledge, aesthetic
perfection, and agricultural plenty, he argues, that botanic
gardens became instruments of government, first in Continental
Europe, and by the late eighteenth century, in Britain and the
British Empire. At the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the rise of
which throughout the nineteenth century is a central theme of this
book, a pioneering scientific institution was added to a
spectacular ornamental garden. At Kew, 'improving' the world became
a potent argument for both the patronage of science at home and
Britain's prerogatives abroad. 'Nature's Government' provides a
portrait of how the ambitions of the Enlightenment shaped the great
age of British power, and how empire changed the British experience
and the modern world. Richard Drayton was born in the Caribbean and
educated at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale. A former Fellow of St.
Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Lincoln College, Oxford, he has
also been Associate Professor of History at the University of
Virginia.
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