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SUMMARY:Spicing up Mauritius' gardens: informal empire and the hybridity o
 f knowledge and plant exchange in the East Indies\, 1740s to 1770s - Dorit
  Brixius (European University Institute)
DTSTART:20151123T130000Z
DTEND:20151123T141500Z
UID:TALK60882@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39097
DESCRIPTION:In the 1740s\, the young Frenchman Pierre Poivre (1719–1786)
  proposed to the Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientale
 s (hereafter the CIO) to gather 'useful' plants and spices in different pa
 rts of the world. In the 1740s and the 1750s\, Poivre was not only mission
 ary but also botanist\, agronomist and later\, between 1767 and 1772\, int
 endant of the Mascarene Islands\, a group of islands off the East coast of
  Madagascar\, consisting of Isle de France (present-day Mauritius)\, Bourb
 on (present-day Réunion) and Rodrigues. On his first mission to the Moluc
 cas Islands – coveted spice monopoly of the Dutch East India Company (VO
 C) – Poivre aimed at gathering luxury spices\, namely clove and nutmeg\,
  and introduce them to Isle de France with the idea to turn the island int
 o the cultivating ground for the French spice trade. I argue that this ent
 erprise was by no means 'purely' French but a hybrid project\, which invol
 ved actors from different backgrounds with different types of knowledge.\n
 \nThe case of Isle de France's spice garden serves as a particular place-i
 n-the-making in order to understand the wider French imperial system and i
 ts dynamics from the overseas actors' point of view. While stressing the p
 erformative character of botany\, I will consider actors as mobile agents 
 from different backgrounds. These actors were connected between various ge
 ographical regions\, yet\, their disparity as opposed to their collaborati
 on is assumed – when it comes to Europeans as opposed to Europeans or Eu
 ropeans as opposed to non-Europeans. Thus\, the purpose of my paper is to 
 closely examine the connected and cross-cultural communication in botany t
 hrough the lens of Poivre's exchange networks in a bottom-up perspective. 
 What I call 'informal empire' is thus an umbrella term for the cross-cultu
 ral relations between actors offside imperial rule and rivalry. I hope tha
 t I can marry approaches from the history of science\, economic history an
 d global history – in short botany as a nuanced global science which I d
 emonstrate through three dimensions: 1) the informal collaboration between
  European actors\, 2) indigenous plant knowledge in the Indo-Pacific regio
 n\, and 3) natural knowledge and slavery on Isle de France.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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