Abstract
The biological and strategic importance of the Malay-Indonesian region — synonymous with the biogeographical zones of Sunda and Wallacea — placed materia medica at the forefront of regional and international commerce in the pre-European era.1 It thus became the target of East India Company and imperial plant prospecting aimed at appropriating both the resources and the less tangible knowledge associated with them. I argue that, notwithstanding European political hegemony, indigenous materia medica remained autonomous and inaccessible except through avenues of social discourse and collaboration.
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Notes
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Kathirithamby-Wells, J. (2015). Unlikely Partners: Malay-Indonesian Medicine and European Plant Science. In: Damodaran, V., Winterbottom, A., Lester, A. (eds) The East India Company and the Natural World. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_10
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