Backdoor Broadcasting Company

__________ __________

Event Date: 6 December 2011
Flett Lecture Theatre
Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD

 

Wallich and Indian Natural History:
Collection Dispersal and the Cultivation of Knowledge

 

This international, interdisciplinary conference will be held on the 6th and 7th December, 2011 at the Natural History Museum, London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on the general theme of South Asian natural history collections, with a special emphasis on those of the Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich (1786–1854). Wallich is a major figure in the history and development of botany in the nineteenth century. As Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden between 1817 and 1846, he undertook botanical expeditions, described new plant species, collected thousands of plant specimens amassing a large herbarium, and commissioned local artists to draw beautiful botanical watercolours. His work has therefore been extremely influential in South Asian natural history research.

Major South Asian natural history collections from the 18th and 19th century are now dispersed across institutions in South Asia, Europe and beyond. This conference will explore the challenges associated with studying and exploiting such collections and the interesting opportunities they provide for interdisciplinary research. It forms an integral part of the World Collections Programme-funded project “Wallich and Indian Natural History”, the first inter-institutional endeavour of its kind between the Natural History Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the British Library. In particular, this project is creating an exciting new website (coming soon) which supports a virtual collection of the plant drawings, specimens and correspondence of Nathaniel Wallich.

In celebration of this project, a group of distinguished international speakers has been brought together to present papers covering a wide range of different disciplines. They will speak on the first day of the conference at the Natural History Museum. Day two, held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will provide a unique opportunity to see a wide range of Wallich and related materials (including original drawings and herbarium collections) behind the scenes at Kew. We welcome everyone interested in natural history, art history, botany, South Asian studies, social history, history of the British Empire, museum studies and digital humanities to join us for what we anticipate will be a very stimulating conference.

—————————————————–

Programme

Welcome by Professor Philip Rainbow (Keeper of Zoology, NHM) .

—————————————————–
Opening Remarks (Julie Harvey, CAHR Centre)

PLAY

 

download

—————————————————–

Panel 1 - Nathaniel Wallich: His Expeditions and Collections

(Chair: Dr B. Venugopal, Director, National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi)

David Arnold (Department of History, University of Warwick)
Nathaniel Wallich and the Natural History of India
[AUDIO HERE]

Bodhisattva Kar (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)
Frontier, Collected: Nathaniel Wallich in the North-Eastern Frontier of British India
[AUDIO HERE]

Sangeeta Rajbhandary (Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University), and
Krishna K. Shrestha (Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University), Mark F. Watson (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh)
Wallich and the First Explorations of the Nepalese Flora
[AUDIO HERE]

Panel 1 Discussion

PLAY

 

download

———————————————————————————————–

Panel 2 – Dispersal and Movement within the British Empire

(Chair: Professor Felix Driver, Professor of Human Geography, Royal Holloway College, University of London)

Sandip Hazareesingh (Department of History, The Open University)
Plants, Power and Productivity: The East India Company and Cotton Imperialism in Early Nineteenth-Century Western India
[AUDIO HERE]

Caroline Cornish (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway College, University of London)
Circulating India: Kew, Colonial Forestry and Circuits of Display
[AUDIO HERE]

Kapil Raj (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Title TBC
[AUDIO HERE]

Panel 2 Discussion

PLAY

 

download

———————————————————————————————–

Panel 3. The Wallich Project
(Chair: Dr Vinita Damodaran, Senior Lecturer in South Asian History, University of Sussex)

Henry Noltie (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh)
Scottish Surgeons and Indian Botany: Dispersed Collections of Drawings and Specimens, a Case Study from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
[AUDIO HERE]

Antonia Moon (British Library) and Charlie Jarvis (Natural History Museum)
Wallich’s Papers at the British Library and Beyond
[AUDIO HERE]

Timothy Utteridge (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Clare Drinkell (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) and Ranee Prakash (Natural History Museum) The Wallich Plant Illustrations in London: Identification and Dissemination
[AUDIO HERE]
Panel 3 Discussion

PLAY

 

download

———————————————————————————————–

Closing Remarks (Julie Harvey, CAHR Centre) .

———————————————————————————————–

conference images:

2 Comments

__________ __________

Event Date: 6 December 2011
Flett Lecture Theatre
Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD

 

Wallich and Indian Natural History:
Collection Dispersal and the Cultivation of Knowledge

————————————————————–

Bodhisattva Kar (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)
Frontier, Collected: Nathaniel Wallich in the North-Eastern Frontier of British India

Abstract: This paper wishes to explore the tensions between the logic of scientific collection, the art of making a frontier and the culture of recording experiences through a critical reconsideration of Nathaniel Wallichís famous travels across the north-eastern frontier of British India in the early eighteen thirties. At one level, this is an effort to complicate the easy collapse of science into colonialism, exploration into extraction, and experience into textual surface. At another, this paper also raises the question of limits and travels. How the commercial mandate of the Tea Committee circumscribed Wallichís botanical investigations, how the imperative of state making was in turn constrained by the conflicting findings of Wallich and his colleagues in the Scientific Deputation, and how the physical experience of travelling in the frontier unsettled the limits of the textual archive that grew out of it: these are some of the questions that this paper addresses. I would like to particularly focus on Wallichís pursuits of tea and rubber, the two commodities which eventually became the main exports from British Assam. In taking an issue with the standard approach to histories of colonial collections that routinely underplays the constitutive experience of travel in the production of scientific archives, my paper tries to raise a set of wider questions about the ethics and politics ofapproaching the archive that Wallich has left us. My sources consist of government documents, Tea Committee papers, Wallichís journals and scientific essays.

————————————————————–

talk:

PLAY

 

download

————————————————————–

back to conference

No Comments