Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany.
But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.
Londa Schiebinger is John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science and Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
“The Base for All Economics”
Plan of the Book
1. Voyaging Out
Botanistes Voyageurs
Maria Sibylla Merian
Biopirates
Who Owns Nature?
Voyaging Botanical Assistants
Creole Naturalists and Long-Term Residents
Armchair Botanists
The Search for the Amazons
Heroic Narratives
2. Bioprospecting
Drug Prospecting in the West Indies
Biocontact Zones
Secrets and Monopolies
Drug Prospecting at Home
Brokers of International Knowledge
3. Exotic Abortifacients
Merian’s Peacock Flower
Abortion in Europe
Abortion in the West Indies: The Colonial Sexual Economy
Schiebinger brings humble plants--peacock flowers and sassafras trees--into the dark and poignant heart of eighteenth century colonial encounters and into the modern history of cultural exchange. Desperate to extract some botanical knowledge from native peoples, Europeans were equally anxious to suppress other medicines--most notably, the abortifacients with which slaves sought to cheat their master of property and through which European women might also seek to rob the mercantalist state of population. Bio-prospecting was a deeply troubled enterprise. This is a morally serious book for anyone interested in the globalization of 'intellectual property.'
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
A rich, innovative analysis--laced with poignant vignettes of the lives of travelers, lovers, colonists, and slaves--of how gender structured the science of botany in the age of mercantilist empires. This book sheds light on how the knowledge of plants of Caribbean Amerindians and slaves moved into Northern European gardens and salons and back again into colonial plantations worldwide. Most importantly, it illuminates how this very knowledge was actively suppressed when it proved threatening to the gendered foundations of power at the European core. — Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, SUNY-Buffalo
Lorraine Daston
Plants and Empire shows how botany and slavery, cruelty and courage, curiosity and capitalism all converged on one beautiful "peacock flower"--the ornament of European gardens, a sought-after medicament, and an abortifacient for slave women who refused to bear children into inhuman bondage. This book is rich in information and insights about how plants have transformed our world; it is above all rich in stories about the people who hunted and used them, splendidly told. — Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Thomas Laqueur
Schiebinger brings humble plants--peacock flowers and sassafras trees--into the dark and poignant heart of eighteenth century colonial encounters and into the modern history of cultural exchange. Desperate to extract some botanical knowledge from native peoples, Europeans were equally anxious to suppress other medicines--most notably, the abortifacients with which slaves sought to cheat their master of property and through which European women might also seek to rob the mercantalist state of population. Bio-prospecting was a deeply troubled enterprise. This is a morally serious book for anyone interested in the globalization of 'intellectual property.' — Thomas Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley
