Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1996, Visions of Empire examines the discovery of Pacific lands by European travellers, focusing on how plants and peoples were depicted, and revealing how botany and natural history were shaped by imperial, political and cultural frameworks.
Table of Contents1. Introduction David Philip Miller; Part I. The Banksian Empire: 2. Joseph Banks, empire, and 'centers of calculation' in late Hanoverian London David Philip Miller; 3. Agents of empire: the Banksian collectors and evaluation of new lands David Mackay; 4. The antipodean exchange: European horticulture and imperial designs Alan Frost; 5. Disciplining disease: scurvy, the navy, and imperial expansion, 1750–1825 Christopher Lawrence; 6. The ordering of nature and the ordering of empire: a commentary John Gascoigne; Part II. The Uses of Botany: 7. Purposes of Linnaean travel: a preliminary research report Lisbet Koerner; 8. Botany in the boudoir and garden: the Banksian context Janet Browne; 9. 'On the banks of the South Sea': botany and the sexual controversy in the late eighteenth century Alan Bewell; Part III. Representations of Living Nature and their Uses: 10. 'Implanted in our natures': humans, plants, and the stories of art Martin Kemp; 11. Images of ambiguity: eighteenth-century microscopy and the neither/nor Barbara M. Stafford; 12. Global physics and aesthetic empire: Humboldt's physical portrait of the tropics Michael Dettelbach; 13. Seeing and understanding: a commentary Peter Hanns Reill; Part IV. The Indigenous Environment: Anthropological Perspectives: 14. The scientific endeavor and the natives Ingjerd Hoëm; 15. Mediated encounters with Pacific cultures: three Samoan dinners Alessandro Duranti; 16. Visions of empire: afterword Simon Schaffer.
