Chapter 2 - Jamaica’s Patrick Browne

Summary

The career of Patrick Browne (1720–1790), an Irish physician who lived in Jamaica at mid-century, demonstrates the multiple meanings of natural history for British colonists, from mere diversion to asserting a positive, constructive “creole” identity. The Civil and Natural History (London, 1756) shows his ideological commitments to making nature “useful,” his adherence to physico-theological views that valorized scientific activity for proving divine activity, and his commitment to making Linnaean taxonomy work in the field by systematically applying the Swede’s still controversial principles. Browne’s History also identifies the local informants who provided material support for his endeavors, from hospitality to specimens; read as a social document, it demonstrates the many ways in which the island’s people – free and enslaved, White and Black, wealthy, middling, and poor – made Jamaican nature “useful.” An analysis of the book’s subscription list reveals how critical local Jamaican support was to its publication. This fact transformed it into as much a Jamaican as a European intellectual achievement while making it vulnerable to criticism in metropolitan Britain despite the support of prominent continental scientists.