Hidden Hands in Colonial Natural Histories

Caroline Cornish (Kew), "Hidden hands and the development of economic botany"
Abstract:
Economic botany as a term first appeared in print in the early 19th century and is now generally understood by historians of colonialism as that set of extractive practices whereby plants with commercial applications were mobilised from their natural habitats to plantations within colonial territories; and where cheap labour – local or imported – was an essential element in the economic formula. The role of enslaved and indentured labour in this process is well documented, as is the role played by gardens such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which provided the botanical and horticultural expertise required to successfully identify, transport, and acclimatise plant species in this way.
In this paper, however, I consider other forms of captive or coerced labour – including prisoners, the mentally ill, and child vagrants - who were deployed in the creation of items in Kew’s Economic Botany Collection. Taking an object-based approach I examine who was involved, and how, and what this can add to our knowledge of economic botany as it evolved over the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ranee Prakash (Natural History Museum, London), "Samuel Browne- a cross-cultural study of medicinal plant use in India"
Prakash, R. 1, Carine, M.1, & Hawkins, J.A.2
1 Natural History Museum, South Kensington, UK
2 University of Reading, UK
In 1697 the English physician Samuel Brown (Browne) sent to London a collection of several hundred pressed and dried plant specimens that were prepared in India in the region of Fort St George (Chennai). These were incorporated as bound books (two volumes) and are now held in the historic collections of the Natural History Museum, London. Along with his original handwritten notes mentioning the medicinal and other uses of the plants, Browne also recorded their vernacular (native names).
Browne’s collection is a notable survivor from the late 17th century and provides unique insights into plant use in south India at the time. We compared Browne’s collections cross culturally with other contemporary plant uses of Hortus Malabaricus (Kerala) and Paul Hermann (Sri Lanka) in relation to today’s uses. This study provides a unique insight in the study of medicinally useful plants, highlights value of historic herbaria and shows new ways of looking at ethnobotanical data.
Current work at the Museum involves identifying the remaining collections from Samuel Browne (and other collectors from the Indian region) that we have in the Historic Collections room where we are reconstructing flora of Madras from late 17th to early 18th century (funded by Royal Society).
 
Link to the paper Samuel Browne’s late 17th century Indian herbarium: identifications and early modern taxonomic practice
in Botany Letters:
https://doi.org/10.1080/23818107.2023.2296095

Victoria Dickenson and Anna Winterbottom (McGill), "Hidden hands in colonial natural histories: lessons from four case studies at McGill"
In this opening session, we will reflect on the concept of “hidden hands” and why we believe it is useful to describe people who were important to making natural history collections, but whose knowledge and skills have rarely been discussed. These include women, servants, and enslaved people as well as local and Indigenous experts and “go-betweens”. We will introduce our four case studies, which focus on Canada, Haiti, India, and Sri Lanka, and include herbarium specimens, natural historical drawings, palm-leaf manuscripts, and material belongings. Some of the practical approaches to these materials that we will discuss include, cataloguing, digitisation, and the identification of species. The theoretical approaches that we bring to the materials range from communal biographies to animal histories to a focus on material culture and the material aspects of artwork and manuscripts. We will also talk about some of the partnerships we have made during our study, including working with visual artists, inviting experts for study visits, and hosting study days within museum collections. At the end of the session, we would like to invite group members to introduce themselves and their interests and approaches to hidden hands and hidden histories of natural history.