The Rafflesia in the Natural and Imperial Imagination of the East India Company in Southeast Asia

Barnard, Timothy P.

doi:10.1057/9781137427274_8

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Abena Dove Osseo‐Asare's (2014) history of six plants and their transformation into marketable pharmaceuticals examines the contestations over plant matter—like those of the Hoodia genus—among healers, African scientists, and global pharma. The giant parasitic Rafflesia of Southeast Asia, in Barnard's treatment, “became a symbol of not only the alterity” of the region, “but also a justification” for the incessant accumulative nature of imperial science, particularly under the English (2015, p. 148). In these studies, it is clear that world s are made because of human interest in plants: from the ships loaded with and transported to Europe with peacock flowers to the copious notes, letters, and manuscripts scribbled on the Rafflesia to demonstrate English intellectual preeminence in colonial Southeast Asia.…”

Section: History and The Plant Turnmentioning

confidence: 99%

From objects of study to worldmaking beings: The history of botany at the corner of the plant turn

Gutierrez

2023

History Compass

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The “plant turn” of recent years has surfaced as an interdisciplinary position that sees plants as more than inert, passive objects subject to the whims of humans and of more charismatic animal life. Recent research in STEM, the social sciences, and the humanities, alongside scholarly publishing pursuits, have opened a field in which a small yet expanding community of scholars are proposing the worldmaking and agential capacities of plants. While the field of environmental history has already spent decades centering vegetal life and its profound impact on human societies, this essay considers what the plant turn might look like for the history of science and more specifically, the history of botany. What might it mean for plants to transform from objects of study to worldmaking beings in histories of the science? Drawing on two brief historical case studies from the Philippines, the essay invites consideration of plant worldmaking, understood in tandem with alternative ontologies, and of theorizing with plants. Though it may be much too soon to draw conclusions about what the plant turn may portend for the history of science (and the writing that may come from it), historians may have something to offer the plant turn—in discipline and method—in order to make this promising bed of scholarship rigorous and accessible.

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Section: History and The Plant Turnmentioning

confidence: 99%

From objects of study to worldmaking beings: The history of botany at the corner of the plant turn

Gutierrez

2023

History Compass

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“…As in most accounts of so-called discoveries, any participation by the locals went unnoted, and the fact that the plant was unknown only to colonial authorities was downplayed. 49 Expressions of amazement and wonder abound both in Arnold's letter and in the excerpt that Brown transcribed from a letter to Banks by Stamford Raffles, Governor of the East India Company's establishments in Sumatra. Raffles calls it "the largest and most magnificent Flower which, as far as we know, has yet been described."…”

Section: Creating a Genusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Affinities: The Natural Method and Anomalous Plants in the Nineteenth Century

Kury

Albuquerque

2021

HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology

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Approaching from an analysis of the work of Robert Brown (1773-1858) and Friedrich Welwitsch (1806–1872) on Rafflesia and Welwitschia, this article explores how the “natural method” became a tool for understanding extra-European flora in the nineteenth century. As botanists worked to detect “hidden affinities” between plants that would enable them to identify the so-called natural families to which even anomalous species belonged, they relied on comparison as their basic methodological procedure, making it essential for them to have access to collections. In their scientific writings, professional botanists tended to steer clear of any emphasis on plant exoticism. While botany engaged in dialogue with various types of approaches, the field essentially normalized the exotic. The article’s exploration of the hermetic style of scientific texts and the way botanists incorporated illustrators’ work sheds light on the complexity of the spaces where natural history was done, in a context where plants were circulating from around the globe.

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“…14 Chantrey had created a bust of Raffles in 1817, which the administrator himself had commissioned following his return from Java with the goal of enhancing the image he was tirelessly cultivating, that of a knowledgeable elite nobleman with insight into Southeast Asian cultures and societies, which allowed him to govern them with practices steeped in Enlightenment rationality. 15 Portrait busts were often paid through subscriptions, and Chantrey treated each of these commissions as a business transaction, using his membership in the Royal Academy, as well as his reputation, to justify payment for his work, which he recorded in ledgers, along with the person who commissioned the work. Raffles, for example, paid £126 for his marble visage in 1817, and thus placed himself alongside such titans of the period as Joseph Banks, James Watt and Horatio Nelson.…”

Section: Funerary Monumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commemorating Raffles: The creation of an imperial icon in colonial Singapore

Barnard¹

2019

J. Southeast Asian stud.

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While Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles led the expedition that founded colonial Singapore in 1819 and conceptualised many of the early institutions that developed the trade port, it was the depiction and commemoration of his time in the region that made him an icon of imperial mythology. This was part of a process in which admiration of his name and exploits were exalted, ultimately representing a core element in the Victorian mentality, the need to create heroes to glorify the British Empire. This article will survey and analyse how the commemoration of Raffles in the first 75 years of colonial rule, through the commissioning of statues and the attachment of his name to establishments and institutions, solidified and justified a British presence in the region and larger imperial history, which continues to echo in the modern nation-state of Singapore and its history.

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The Rafflesia in the Natural and Imperial Imagination of the East India Company in Southeast Asia

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

From objects of study to worldmaking beings: The history of botany at the corner of the plant turn

From objects of study to worldmaking beings: The history of botany at the corner of the plant turn

Global Affinities: The Natural Method and Anomalous Plants in the Nineteenth Century

Commemorating Raffles: The creation of an imperial icon in colonial Singapore

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