Chapter 3 - Birds of a Feather

Summary

The surgeon-apothecary Anthony Robinson (d. 1768) self-consciously continued the work of Hans Sloane, Patrick Browne, and Mark Catesby while covering more physical ground in Jamaica than any naturalist before him. His unpublished manuscript notes provide important insights into the daily challenges of a naturalist at work in the West Indies. Enthusiastically embracing Linnaean taxonomy, he struggled to make sense of Jamaican nature by collating information from published sources, his own observations, and those of local informants. He established a network of collaborators across the island, some of whom he befriended. His intellectual friendships with Thomas Thistlewood and Robert Long (brother of Edward, the author of the influential History of Jamaica [1774]) reveal the benefits of such relationships for White male colonists: They satisfied curiosity and emotional needs, and they cultivated disciplined, “virtuous” identities that further distanced them from the enslaved while asserting their worth against metropolitan disdain.