Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic GardensThis widely acclaimed book analyzes the political effects of scientific research as exemplified by one field, economic botany, during one epoch, the nineteenth century, when Great Britain was the world's most powerful nation. Lucile Brockway examines how the British botanic garden network developed and transferred economically important plants to different parts of the world to promote the prosperity of the Empire. In this classic work, available once again after many years out of print. Brockway examines in detail three cases in which British scientists transferred important crop plants -- cinchona (a source of quinine), rubber, and sisal -- to new continents. Weaving together botanical, historical, economic, political, and ethnographic findings, the author illuminates the remarkable social role of botany and the entwined relation between science and politics in an imperial era. Book jacket. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The British Empire | 22 |
India in the Plantation Economy | 28 |
Copyright | |
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acres agricultural Amazon Amazon basin Asia Asian Ayrton Badagas Bean became botanical stations botanists Brazil Brazilian Britain brought bulbils capital Ceylon China Chinese cinchona cinchona bark coffee colonial Columbian exchange commercial cultivation Curator Darwin Dutch early East Africa East India Company economic eighteenth century Empire England English established Europe European expansion export fiber forest French henequen Hevea History important indigo islands Java Joseph Hooker Kew Bulletin Kew Gardens Kew's labor force land Latin America Linnean Society London Madras maize malaria Malaya Manaus Markham Mexico million monopoly native natural Nilgiri Nilgiri Hills nineteenth century Ootacamund plant transfers plantation crops plantations planters political population potato production quinine Royal Botanic Gardens Royal Society rubber scientific seeds ships Sir Joseph sisal slave social South Spanish species spices sugar Superintendent tion trade trees tropical University West Indies wild rubber William Wolf and Wolf Yucatan