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Event Date: 17 April 2012
Dorothea Bate Seminar Room
Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD

Sloane’s Treasures

Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) was a doctor who collected curiosities with a passion. Although he always hoped society would benefit, he would be astonished at the scale of the enterprise he started…

Hans Sloane was one of the great men of early eighteenth-century London, a wealthy and popular physician to high society and royalty. But it was the natural sciences, especially botany, which fired his interest.
In his long life, he amassed one of the greatest ever private collections of plants, animals, antiquities, coins and other curios. It was to be the founding core of the British Museum and later the Natural History Museum.

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Sloane’s Treasures
Workshop 1: Understanding Sloane’s Natural Objects

Julie Harvey (Head of Centre for Arts and Humanities Research (CAHR), Natural History Museum) – Welcome, Introduction and Arrangements for the Day

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Presentations

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Charlie Jarvis (Department of Botany and Scientific Co-ordinator for the Centre for Arts and Humanities Research, NHM)
Overview of Sloane’s natural objects held at the Natural History Museum
[AUDIO HERE]

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Alan Hart (Head of Collections, Department of Mineralogy, NHM)
Modern science and Sloane’s ‘minerals’
[AUDIO HERE]

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Miles Ogborn (Head of School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London )
Questions and future answers: Understanding Sloane’s Vegetable Substances Collection
AUDIO HERE

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Collection Tours
Participants will join a tour, visiting two venues:

Sloane’s Herbarium,
introduced by Mark Spencer, Department of Botany, NHM

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Group discussions and feedback
Discussion 1: Public Engagement

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Discussion 2: Digitisation and Imaging

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Discussion 3: Research

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Final Comments

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Event Date: 17 April 2012
Dorothea Bate Seminar Room
Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD

Sloane’s Treasures

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Miles Ogborn (Head of School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London )
Questions and future answers: Understanding Sloane’s Vegetable Substances Collection

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talk:

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questions:

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Event Date: 17 April 2012
Dorothea Bate Seminar Room
Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD

Sloane’s Treasures

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Alan Hart (Head of Collections, Department of Mineralogy, NHM)
Modern science and Sloane’s ‘minerals’

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talk:

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questions:

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accompanying images:

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Event Date: 17 April 2012
Dorothea Bate Seminar Room
Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD

Sloane’s Treasures

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Charlie Jarvis (Department of Botany and Scientific Co-ordinator for the Centre for Arts and Humanities Research, NHM)
Overview of Sloane’s natural objects held at the Natural History Museum

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talk:

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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.

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Programme

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

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Opening Remarks (Julie Harvey, CAHR Centre)

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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

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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

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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

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Closing Remarks (Julie Harvey, CAHR Centre) .

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conference images:

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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

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

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Abstract:
This paper introduces the 110 files of India Office Records now digitised for the Wallich project. Ranging from reports and travel accounts to letters and financial statements, these records are a major source of information on Wallich’s career: a direct result of the insistence by the East India Company’s directors that every action of its servants in India be fully reported back to London. We shall explain the administrative context of the documents, draw attention to some of the themes contained within them, and suggest possibilities for new research that their digitisation opens up. We shall briefly compare this collection to Wallich’s surviving papers in Calcutta, and indicate further sources where relevant material might be found.

Biography:
Antonia Moon is Lead Curator, India Office Records (post-1858) at the British Library. She has a particular interest in the archives of colonial science and has led the Library’s contribution to the Wallich project.

Charlie Jarvis is a botanist working at the Natural History Museum in London. He has published extensively on the botanical binomial names published by Carl Linnaeus and the herbarium collections, books and manuscripts that contributed to Linnaeus’ understanding of these numerous species. The biological collections of Hans Sloane are a current research interest. He is also scientific co-ordinator of the Museum’s Centre for Arts and Humanities Research.

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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

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Kapil Raj (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Title TBC

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Abstract: Between July and September 2011, I had the honour of spending two and a half months as a resident research fellow at the Centre for Arts and Humanities Research of the Natural History Museum, London. This fellowship, which was the culmination of the “Wallich and Indian Natural History” project, was intended to review the South Asian natural history drawings, often executed by indigenous artists, held at the three recipients of the World Collections Programme grant for the Wallich project. These drawings and paintings number nearly 30,000 items in the three London institutions alone. In this talk, I shall focus on the highly enriching experience of working collectively with members of the staff at the NHM, where I spent most of my time, the working conditions and facilities, the nature of the collections, and above all, some of the directions and themes for future research using these vast, invaluable collections to throw new light on the global history of natural history, the historical anthropology of intercultural encounter and imperial and colonial history in general.

Biography: Kapil Raj is Directeur d’Ètudes (Research Professor) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is attached to the Alexander KoyrÈ Centre for the History of Science of which he is currently co-director. His research focuses on the construction of scientific knowledge through the circulation and encounter of South Asian and European specialised practitioners and their skills in the early modern and modern periods, the subject of his recent book, Relocating Modern Science (2007) and of a collective work entitled The Brokered World (2009). He is currently engaged in writing his next book on the urban and knowledge dynamics of Calcutta in the 18th century.

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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

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

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Abstract: The Museum of Economic Botany at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was the idea of the first director, William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), and opened in 1847; a second museum was added ten years later. With audiences including the merchant, the manufacturer, the physician, the chemist, the druggist, the dyer, the carpenter and cabinet-maker, and artisans of every description,[1] the object was to instruct British industry on the wealth of plant resources available throughout the Empire. Woods formed a major component of the museum collections from inception and by 1863 a third museum, dedicated to colonial timbers, was opened in the former Orangery.

Whilst the museums no longer exist, the collections survive as the Economic Botany Collection and provide a rich resource for analysing the movement of collections from South Asia, during and prior to the existence of the Kew museums. Approximately 20,000 specimens of Indian woods are held which were transferred to Kew from EIC officers, the former India Museum, Indian botanic gardens, and numerous other institutions in the sub-continent. Many of the best-known names in imperial botany are represented in them, including Nathaniel Wallich, William Roxburgh, Joseph Hooker, Thomas Anderson, and Hugh Cleghorn.

In this paper, Kewís Indian woods are considered in two contexts: firstly, the rise of Indian forestry; and secondly, the collection and circulation of Indian arts, manufactures, and natural history specimens in both colony and metropole, what Saloni Mathur refers to as cosmopolitan circuits of exhibition and display.[2] I then trace the circuits taken by selected groups of objects, identifying the human actors who collaborated in their mobilisation, considering their sites of display, and thus gaining a greater understanding of how the Kew museums contributed to the circulation of India.

What emerges is a decentralised view of the forms in which knowledge of India ( objects, texts, images, people ) circulated within India, between India and other colonies and sovereign states, and within the imperial metropole, in the nineteenth century. This approach inevitably calls into play the role played by indigenous Indians in the production and circulation of scientific knowledge of the subcontinent, and results in a re-inscription of indigenous agency into the narrative of circulating India.

Biography: Caroline Cornish is a third year PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a holder of a Thomas Holloway Research Scholarship. Her research project ( Collecting and Curating Science in an Age of Empire ) is focussed on the Kew Museums of Botany from 1847-1939 and is conducted in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In October she will undertake a research trip to India to examine historic sites of collecting and displaying economic botany in the sub-continent. She has previously worked in museums and collections at national and regional level.

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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

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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

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Abstract: This paper will focus on the conquering East India Companyís use of power to transfer different varieties of cotton plants from various parts of the world and to seek to acclimatise them in western India in an effort to improve indigenous cotton productivity and modernise Indian agriculture. It will also examine local peasants’ responses to these attempts to change their accustomed cultivating and cropping practices.

The existing literature on cotton imperialism has charted the ways in which capitalist transformation of the cotton textile industry in Britain and on the European continent in the nineteenth century led to European powersí attempts to expand cotton production and trade in their globally scattered colonies, and the successes and failures of these attempts. However, there has been little detailed examination of the precise modalities and dimensions of colonial power deployed to secure cotton objectives and of the forms of resistance, both human and non-human, encountered. By focusing on the district of Dharwar in western India, scene of some of the most radical experiments, this paper will show how the cause of cotton improvement generated and mobilised new networks, technologies and ideologies of power including the East India Companyís evolving definition of its own mission of governance in India. Colonial governmentality thus came to be fundamentally based on the will to improve and drew on a complex assemblage of power forms that included new modes of administration, changed legal structures and norms of land tenure, as well as the deployment of European botanical knowledge and technical expertise, and of meteorological observations and climate science. However, as this paper will show, colonial rule in the countryside was, in practice, characterised by significant internal contradictions; moreover, cotton cultivators experienced deteriorating livelihoods and proved refractory to improvement schemes, nor were the local climate and soil necessarily amenable to colonial cotton desires.

Biography: I am a lecturer in History at the Open University, having previously taught at Cardiff University, and the author of The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity (2007). I am a founder member of one of the main Research Centre in the Arts Faculty, the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies which focuses on extra-European histories and cultures. I am also Principal Investigator on a British Academy-funded research project, Commodities of Empire (2007-12) which is a collaboration with the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London.

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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

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• Sangeeta Rajbhandary (Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University),
• 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

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Abstract: In western eyes Nepal remained an enigmatic terra incognita until the end of the 18th Century when a Chinese invasion gave the Honorable East India Company (EIC) the opportunity to send a mediating diplomatic mission to Kathmandu in 1793. William Kirkpatrick led this seven-week expedition, accompanied by surgeon-naturalist Adam Freer. Although no botanical collections are known from this expedition, Edinburgh-trained Freer would have taken notes and these probably formed the basis of discussions on medicinal plants in Kirkpatrickís An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal (1811).

The signing of an Anglo-Gurkha trade treaty in 1801 provided a better opportunity for exploration and when Captain Knox took up the post of Resident in Kathmandu in 1802 he took with him Francis Buchanan, another surgeon-naturalist and Edinburgh alumnus. Buchanan (later Hamilton, and known botanically as Buchanan-Hamilton) made good use of his 14-month stay in Nepal, recording over 1100 species, collecting some 1500 herbarium specimens (mostly now at LINN-SMITH and BM), preparing over 100 coloured drawings (LINN) and sending over 100 batches of seed and living material back to William Roxburgh in Calcutta. In 1810 and 1813/14 Buchanan was stationed close to the Nepalese frontier and took the opportunity to send local collectors over the boarder to gather economically important plants. Buchanan acquired specimens of a further 100 Nepalese species this way, forming part of his Bengal Survey collections of more than 2000 specimens which Nathaniel Wallich distributed as part of the EIC Herbarium. Buchanan retained a duplicate set for himself that is now at E.

After the Anglo-Gurkha war in 1816, at Buchanan’s request, Wallich arranged for the new British Resident in Kathmandu, the Hon. Edward Gardner, to send back living plants and herbarium specimens to Wallich in Calcutta. Gardner and his team collected many plants between 1817-1820, and Wallich sent all the specimens to London (now at LINN-SMITH and BM). Wallich either sent seeds back to Britain (some to Buchanan and RBG Edinburgh) or tried to grow them in the Botanical Garden in Calcutta. Wallich himself visited Nepal in 1820-21, extending the exploration of the Nepalese flora beyond the Kathmandu Valley by employing pilgrims to collect plants up to the alpine zone around Gossainthan (Gossainkund). Wallich amassed more than 1700 herbarium specimens from Nepal and distributed them as part of the EIC Herbarium (K, K-W, BM, E, CAL, G-DC, etc.) in which 1834 plants are from Nepal.

In the following years many hundreds of new species were described from these early collections in publications such as Wallichís Tentamen florae Napalensis Illustratae (1824-26), Plantae Asiaticae Rariores (1830-32) and A Numerical List of dried specimens of Plants in the East India Company (1828-49). David Donís monumental work Prodromus Florae Nepalensis (1825) was based on the collections of Buchanan and Gardner (wrongly attributed to Wallich) and alone accounted for over 800 species. These early collections, particularly those in the Wallich distribution, are very important for the taxonomic study of Nepalese plants, but they are unavailable to botanists in Nepal. To facilitate use of these collections, high quality digital images of the specimens in the UK and scattered around world are urgently needed.

Biography: Sangeeta Rajbhandary and Krishna Shrestha are plant taxonomists and senior lectures in the Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University. They have a long interest in the historical collections of western botanists in Nepal, including extended study visits to the Natural History Museum, and Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh and Kew. Mark Watson is also a plant taxonomist, and since 1991 has been based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. His expertise lies in Sino-Himalayan Floristics and he is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Flora of Nepal project. In recent years he has developed an interest on the often misunderstood historic collections that relate to Nepal, in particular those of Francis Buchanan-Hamilton and Edward Gardner.
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