'A young slip of botany': Botanical networks, the South Atlantic, and Britain's maritime worlds, c.1790-1810(Review)

Journal of Global HistoryVolume 11, Issue 1, 8 February 2016, Pages 24-43

• McAleer, J.Email Author
 
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• History, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Highfield, Southampton, United Kingdom

Abstract View references (147)

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. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016.

Author keywords

• botany
 
• British empire
 
• Cape of Good Hope
 
• natural history
 
• science
 
• St Helena

• ISSN: 17400228
• Source Type: Journal
• Original language: English

• DOI: 10.1017/S1740022815000339
• Document Type: Review
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

• References (147)

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  McAleer, J.; History, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Highfield, Southampton, United Kingdom; email:j.mcaleer@soton.ac.uk 
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