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SUMMARY:Putting the pieces together: Canadian ginseng and botanical expert
 ise in the French Regency - Emma Spary (Faculty of History)
DTSTART:20181015T120000Z
DTEND:20181015T130000Z
UID:TALK110341@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Laura Brassington
DESCRIPTION:This paper will examine the complex history of the relationshi
 p between French botanical knowledge\, commerce and Royal institutions in 
 the 1710s–1730s through the case of Canadian ginseng. Its discovery in 1
 717\, growing in newly-colonised French Canada\, was ostentatiously public
 ised back in the metropolis. The history of how this Canadian plant came t
 o be attributed properties similar to those of the famous Chinese drug whi
 ch was its namesake has been told several times\, most recently as a story
  of widening separation between the interests of botanists and those of cl
 ergy. Using previously neglected archival materials\, I will argue\, in co
 ntrast\, for a far more complex response to the new drug\, centred on a re
 configuration of the relationship between state power and botanical expert
 ise during the 1710s. These developing connections shifted the scope of bo
 tanical practice away from classical humanism and towards a new view of th
 e distant natural world as a source of national prosperity\; they also pla
 ced a new emphasis upon the botanical garden as a space of proof and demon
 stration. The ways in which Canadian ginseng changed as an object of knowl
 edge can be seen to express these forming and transforming relationships b
 etween statecraft\, natural knowledge and wealth.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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