Abstract
Over the last fifty years, historians of science and medicine have demonstrated that natural knowledge was central to the process of early modern European expansion. Networks of botanical gardens, plant collectors and plantations eventually aided European powers in increasing their control over colonial territories by using exotic plants as food, medicine and valuable articles of trade.1 However, with some exceptions, such studies have emphasized the importance of European capitals and the scientists working within them as what Bruno Latour calls ‘centres of calculation’.2 While the role of colonial collectors, naturalists, doctors and surgeons working on the ground is recognised by Latour and others, their immediate contexts have often been neglected and their interests in collecting subordinated to those of the metropolitan collector.3 However, the activities that made up the ‘scientific revolution’: the assiduous collection and detailed study of natural objects, the amassing of libraries and ‘repositories’ of curiosities and books of dried plants, the exchange of information through networks of scholarly correspondence and the formulation of theories about the natural world also took place in colonial settlements and outposts. Furthermore, each settlement was embedded within webs of local and international connections and the collection and deployment of natural knowledge had immediate political consequences on the ground as well as distant ones in Europe.
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Among others, Richard H. Drayton (2000), Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press;
Richard Grove (1995), Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds.) (2005), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press:, p. 19;
E. W. Herbert (2011), Flora’s Empire: British Gardens in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Savithri Preetha Nair (2005), ‘Native collecting and natural knowledge (1798–1832): Raja Serfoji of Tanjore as a “Centre of Calculation”’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 15(3): 279–302 contests the Eurocentric ways in which the term ‘centre of calculation’ (from Bruno Latour (1987), Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Chapter 6) has typically been employed.
Latour, Science in Action, p. 217. Critiques include Kapil Raj (2007), Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
D. G. Crawford (1914), History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600–1913, 2 vols. London: W. Thacker & Co., vol. 1, p. 91. Browne was previously the surgeon of a ship called the Dragon.
The specimens are kept in the Sloane Herbarium in the Natural History Museum and described in J. E. Dandy (1958), The Sloane Herbarium: An Annotated List of the Horti Siccicomposing It. London: British Museum. Manuscript notes in the front of the first Browne volume in the Sloane Herbarium note that the seven books were borrowed by James Petiver and Hans Sloane during 1699 from the Royal Society’s repository, to which they had been transferred after a request to the East India Company. A note by Fra[ncis] Hawskbee reads ‘The 1 2 3 & 4 books are in the Society’s house, the rest are missing.’ Presumably the rest were returned to the repository at a later stage.
H. A. van Rheede tot Drakenstein (1678–1703), Hortus Indicus malabaricus, continens regioni malabarici apud Indos celeberrimi omnis generis plantas rari-ones, 12 vols. Amsterdam, Johannis van Someren and Joannis van Dyck. For an English translation, K. S. Manilal (2003), Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus. English Edition, with Annotations and Modern Botanical Nomenclature (12 vols.). University of Kerala, Trivandrum. See also
H. Y. Mohan Ram (2005), ‘On the English edition of Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus by K. S. Manilal (2003)’, Current Science, 89(10): 1672–80.
Pratik Chakrabarti (2010), Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest, and Therapeutics in the Eighteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 33–4.
John F. Richards (1975), Mughal Administration in Golconda. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 72.
Sir Henry Yule, Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. New ed. edited by William Crooke, B.A. (London: J. Murray, 1903). Digital edition published by Digital Dictionaries of South Asia, University of Chicago, URL: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson/ (last accessed 16 September 2014). See pp. 412–13 for the use of the word in the military and as the holder of a hawāla, a tenure between zemindar and ryot. See also
Francis Joseph Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1892. Digital edition also available from Digital Dictionaries of South Asia. University of Chicago, URL: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/ (last accessed 21 May 2014). I am grateful to Drs Minakshi Menon and Prashant Keshavmurthy for their advice about this term.
J. F. Richards (1975), ‘The Hyderabad Karnatik, 1687–1707’, Modern Asian Studies, 9(2): 241–60, 248.
See Rao Bahadur K. V. Rangaswami Iyangar (1994), ‘Manucci in Madras’, in The Madras Centenary Commemoration Volume. Delhi: Asian Educational Services, p. 150. Letter, undated but c. 1699 from John Pitt (of new Company) to Manuchi — BL, India Office Records (IOR) Original Correspondence 6685 and 6790.
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2012), Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 351 for an account of Manucci’s mission to Daud Khan.
Despatch from England dated 16 April 1697 and quoted in Henry J. Love (1913), Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640–1800: Traced from the East India Company’s Records Preserved at Fort St. George and the India Office, and from Other Sources. London, J. Murray, vol. II, p. 88.
Love, Vestiges, vol. 1, p. 564. A dubash (from do bhāšľ lit. ‘two languages’) also has the meaning of secretary or representative (Hobson-Jobson, p. 328). See S. Neild-Basu (1984), ‘The Dubashes of Madras’, Modern Asian Studies, 18(1): 1–31. ‘Conicoply’ is probably from Tamil kanakkapillari. Several references to ‘the warehouse conicoply’ appear in the FSG records. Public hospitals were established by the Emperor Jahangir and were apparently common even in smaller towns during the reign of Aurangzeb.
I. A. Khan (1979), ‘The Middle Classes in the Mughal Empire’, Social Scientist, 5: 28–49.
Pratik Chakrabarti (2006), ‘Neither Meate nor Drinke but what the doctor alloweth’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80(1): 1–38, p. 7.
SB 709. Cape Comorin or Kanyakumari is on the southern-most point of the India peninsula. Agallochum is a fragrant wood used as incense since ancient times (H. H. Wilson (1843), ‘Notes on the Sabhá Parva of the Mahábhárata, Illustrative of Some Ancient Usages and Articles of Traffic of the Hindus’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 7(1): 137–44).
For medicinal gardening in Kerala, see Francis Zimmermann (1989), Le Discours Des Remè des Au Pays Des É pices: Enquê te Sur La Médecine Hindoue. Paris: Payot.
P. Bowe (1999), ‘The Indian Gardening Tradition and the Sajjan Niwas Bagh, Udaipur’, Garden History, 27(2): 189–205;
J. Brookes (1987), Gardens of Paradise: The History and Design of the Great Islamic Gardens. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; Grove, Green Imperialism, pp. 73–94;
J. L. Wescoat and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.) (1996), Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations, and Prospects. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Wescoat and Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.), Mughal Gardens. See also Chandra Mukerji (2005), ‘Dominion, Demonstration and Domination: Religious Doctrine, Territorial Politics and French Plant Collection’, in AA Schiebinger and AA Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany, p. 19.
J. Golinski (2005), Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. xii–xiii.
G. Camelli (1699), ‘A Description and Figure of the True Amomum, or Tugus. Sent from the Reverend Father George Camelli, at the Phillipine Isles, to Mr. John Ray and Mr. James Petiver, Fellows of the Royal Society’, Philosophical Transactions, 21: 2–4. See also R. A. Reyes (2009), ‘Botany and Zoology in the Late Seventeenth-Century Philippines: The Work of Georg Josef Camel SJ (1661–1706)’, Archives of Natural History, 36: 262–76.
BL IOR O.C. 7880, Bulkley to du Bois, 28 October 1698, transcribed in Henry Yule (1887–89), Diary of William Hedges. London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, vol. 2, p. cccxx.
J. Richards, The Mughal Empire, New Cambridge History of India, I. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993, Chapter 10.
For an overview of recent debates see R. Travers (2007), ‘The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: A Review Essay’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40(3): 492–508.
Habib, ‘Economic and Social Aspects of Mughal Gardens’, p. 135 notes that garden tombs were common for Mughal noblemen. While Rheede tot Drakenstein’s and other Dutchmen’s tombs mirrored Indian styles, Bulkley’s is an English-style gravestone. Love, Vestiges, vol. II, p. 90. See also Julian James Cotton (1945), List of Inscriptions of Tombs or Monuments in Madras Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest. Government Press: Madras. Entry 68 is for Edward Bulkley ‘from his monument on the South Esplanade, near the hospital’ who died on 8 August 1714. For the position of Bulkley’s garden see Figure 2, ‘d’. For the current location of Bulkley’s tomb, V. Sriram, ‘Lost and Found: the Bulkley Tomb’, Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music, URL: http://sriramv.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/lost-and-found-the-bulkley-tomb/ (accessed 2 May 2014). The tombstone bears the coat of arms of the Bulkley family of Cheshire, showing three bull’s heads between a chevron. I am grateful to Henry Noltie for pointing this out.
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Winterbottom, A. (2015). Medicine and Botany in the Making of Madras, 1680–1720. 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_3
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