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‘A young slip of botany’: botanical networks, the South Atlantic, and Britain’s maritime worlds, c.1790–1810*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

John McAleer
John McAleer*
Affiliation:
History, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BF, UK E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the relationship between science and empire, through the prism of British botanical engagement with the South Atlantic in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It investigates the logistics of plant exchanges, as information, expertise, and specimens followed the maritime contours of the British empire. The discussion traces the nascent network-building undertaken by officials, residents, and visitors on St Helena and at the Cape of Good Hope, and the exchange of plant specimens with London and, crucially, with other places around the empire. The article suggests that such activities offer perspectives on wider patterns of interaction with an area located at the crossroads of Britain’s maritime empire. In time, the region forged its own botanical networks and created alternative axes of exchange, association, and movement.

Keywords

botanyBritish empireCape of Good Hopenatural historySt Helenascience
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 24 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Neil Chambers, Isabella Charmantier, Helen Cowie, James Davey, Helena Ekerholm, and Jennifer Newell for their comments on previous versions of this article. I would also like to thank the editors of the Journal of Global History, as well as the two anonymous readers, for their valuable advice and insightful comments on earlier drafts.

References

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104 Ibid., pp. 375–6.

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106 Ibid.

107 Ibid.

108 Ibid.

109 Ibid.

110 BL, IOR, E/4/1014, p. 411, Public letter, Bombay, 29 May 1799, para. 33. The reference is to Dr Helenus Scott (1757–1821) of the Bombay Medical Service.

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112 BL, IOR, E/4/60, Public letter, 2 September 1800, para. 24.

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115 Robert Brooke, David Kay, Rev Mr Wilson (Treasurer), N. Bazett, and William Wrangham to James Anderson, 14 June 1788, in Anderson, Correspondence, p. 4.

116 Ibid., p. 4.

117 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

118 James Anderson to St Helena Planters’ Society, 4 February 1789, in Anderson, Correspondence, p. 10.

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