Green

Imperialism

Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmenralism, 1600-1860

RICHARD H. GROVE

DELHI

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS 1995

2

Indigenous knowledge and the significance of South-West India for Portuguese and Dutch constructions of tropical nature

While the growing volume of new long-distance oceanic rrade which developed during the fifreenrh century helped LO stimulate an awareness of the wider world in Western Europe, it also had a much more pecific enabling effect on the development of natural history and 'the status of science in the eyes of governments. A rising interest in empirical fact gathering and experimentarion led to growing enthusiasm for experimentation with new types of medical practice and new drugs. ~othecaries~gardem_ became established.3l.. the universities and were increasingly s[Ocke<l with plants imported fr m dislam lands, These gardens became the si res, of [he firsl attempts to classifv plants on a global basis, The voyages o~s[ century and a half after th~ journeys of Henry the Navigator from 1415 onwards had already begun ro transform the science of botany and to enlarge rnedical ambitions for the scope of pharmacology and natural history.' Foundation of the new botanical gardens was, therefore, clearly connected with the early expansion of the European eccnornic system and remained an accurate indicator in microcosm of [he expansion in European knowledge of [he global environment. The origins of the gardens in medical practice meant that, as knowledge of global nature was acquired, the Hippocratic agendas of medicine and medical pracririnners conrinued to form the dominant basis of European constructions of the extraEuropean natural world. While the Italians changed the parrern of development of the boranieal garden sharply at the end of the fifrcenrhcentury, it should nOI be thoughr [hat the Portuguese ar the margins of Europe had been inactive. Between 1415 and 1487 they were developing a system of .l\crliIJ'1JHj<>,'ttion .,.:u-dPo" ~nr\ Inolt before, the DULch became dominant in this

I See P. E:. Russell, 'Prince Henry the Navigator", Diamant», II (. M~y ''160), l-J" Portuguese s"ilors acrually entered 'unknown' W3U"S when. vessel under Gil Eannes succeeded in rounding Uipc H~iador, just suulh of J.at. 27' N_ in what is now the Saharan !erriwry of Rio .d'Oro The ,"l.d~iTO archipelagu "'os occupied in 1418-20 and the Azun:s in 101-39,

73

74

Green imperialism

field, were carrying out a complex, although not highly organised, series of plant transfers, some of which were to Ita ve major 'eco.oQ_'!Jic ~ consequences.' In performing such transfers, the Portuguese built on much older patterns of distribution and ph3irmacologica1 rrade in the Indian Ocean region.~ The main contribution made by the Portuguese was to link such existing systems to the West African, Caribbean and Brazilian regions} The first agencies of plant transfers and the first founders of collecting and medicinal gardens under the Portuguese were the religious houses founded in the first years of settlemenr.s

In August 1487 Bartholomew Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa.

Within thirty years, following rhe establishment of rhe Portuguese eastern empire in Goa, Magellan's fleet had crossed the Pacific and completed the first circumnavigation of the globe (152 H1.). Finally, with the arrival of Vasco da Garna in Malabar in 1498, rhe scene was set for a global and comparatively accelerated exchange of biological information and biological material, particularly among Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. Such enlarged horizons, perhaps the most significant stimulus and accompaniment to the explosion of mental energy which characterised the Renaissance, had an intellectual eounterpart: scholarly exploration of time and eexr as 3 consequence of the reevaluation of Graeco-Roman and Arabic thought that laid particular emphasis on nature and her works, The translation and publication in Venice of Pliny the Elder's Natural History, written in the first century A.D., led to a reappraisal of the work of 3 student of Plato and Aristotle, the Greek naturalist Theophrastus of Erasia (37o--28S B.C.), His E'I'qllirJl into Plants and the De materia medi,a of Dioscorides (first century A.D.) attracted particular attention. This reawakening of interest was also extended into depiction: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Albrecht Durer (1471-1.528) made the first truIy botanical studies of the Renaissance between 1503 and 1505. This revival of interest in the study of nature and the introduction of exotic plants during the fifteenth century also contributed to the institution of the first acclimatisarion and botanical gardens., initially established b'y the Portuguese on Madelra, Sio Tome and F,ernando PQ and followed a little later by gardens

- .

z R. N. Kapil and A. K. Bharnagar, 'Portuguese ronrriburions to Indian OOIOnJ". 1111. 67 (1976). #cr-S3; K. L., Mch .. , 'Portuguese introductions of fruit plants Into India', ["diJI" Honirutturr, 10: I, :t-4 (1965), 8-,:1.. IOr:U, 33-5.

3 P. Maht:Shwari and R. N. Kapil, 'A shnrr history of batany in hldi~',]"'mfnllJj'lh~ [lnmmlJ' I)IGauh/l.li. 9 (1958), 3-J'; G, King, 'The early history of lndian botany', Rrpurl 'ifllu BritiSh

_A~",'U-ildi.,J'II- r..,. ;It, J~J~'JlJj""f1~r,J ,1,{ ~.(f-:".Ji(,,' lIino nn~nt)d-IO

4 Although It shoUld be said Ihal /\SIan 1000 plana; prooamy TC'enen ... "SI n.m.-. ,'" ure y,u Sahelian trade roUles;!lCC Thurstan Shaw, 'Early agriculture in .iHrica',]"unltll ol/h' Hmorir«! Sori~ly ~I Niguia, 6 (11172), r n-'p.

Garda da Orra, {or example, knew of Indian plents, including CIISSI" .lisluffJ. rhlll were grown in the garden of the convem of San Frsncisco de 1::1 Viep in S,,'1 Domingo in tim Wesl Indies:

One, C%quial, p, I [5 (Markham trsns.; see n. IZ (or derails of this work).

Portuguese and Dutch learn from South-West India

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established in ltaly on models derived from the major Arabic botanical texts. These Islamic garden models were themselves derived from gardens that had evolved since the eighth, century in various parts of Persia, Iraq, Afghanistan and orthern India," The lasting significance of the newly printed Arabi and eastern botanical texts should nor be overestimated, however. As we shall see, the empirical agendas of post-Renaissance medicine first rook up and then rejected the canons of'sueh au!h2rir~~_~~cenna as being Simply inad'equate to deal with the new iotanical realms being encou~ed by ·Europeans. For after the 14805 the area of these 'known' realms had expanded at great speed. In the co~rse of this process, the problems of c!!.ssifying a.nd understanding the botanies of South and South-East Asia cam~ ~cise a particular dom~nance over the panern of development of Eur_ope~n t>otany. arid irs iacreasmgly empirical character.

By 1550 the world was largely known in outline to Europeans, and the existence of a world Ilora was being recognised. This was an important developrnenr, since a botanical science which was global in scope and exact in its concerns increasingly allowed ecological changes, artificially induced or otherwise, [0 be accurately recorded. An exultation with the minutiae of the natural world, often apparenr in late-sixreenrh-cenrury travellers' accounts of the tropics, was paralleled on a small scale in the development of botanical science and natural history in Europe. The flew botanical gardens were intended [0 bring together representative specimens from every part of the world. As such, the gardens themselves acquired a meaning as symbols of an economic power capable of reaching and affecting the whole biological world. As landscape 'texts" [hey signified a particular 'type of ecological control that had not previously been available, _Larlit;;r herbalrde and herbal books had been confined to a far narrower Indo-Euro an and Arabic field of knowledge and plant collection. Since -print;dkabic b~tanicaI tex~ 3ndIsiamic garden models appeared as a product of the same renaissance of learning and broadly from the same textual sources [he significance of the relationship between the horrus (plant collection) as printed medico-botanical text and the hcrtus as planned botanical garden cannot be ignored.t

At another symbolic level the new botanical ~r~!e~eJai'ed a role as fe-creations of Paradise, as John Prest has recently demonstrated,' The Edenic

6 Sec John Brookes. Gari/,,,, "I Purlllbs<,' The ''''tury aJld "mgn of Iht guo/ Mami, gur"t~ s, London, 1987.

• ~~C!I'. ~- ••• -. _ _, •• ~ "UHVlI UIII.IU G.I I5oU.l.U'\..iiU I'LL , '~""JlrJ J',} V"IIIU"J'. ,.rlfl

papm prrftnUJ et <l1'J'mp"""", at Ihe Cltlf./t Mrmn.rilll Lihra']', UCLA, Los A.ngeles, 1965.

8 Prest, The G,mim ,.j' Edr». The titles of some populo, late-severncenrh-cenrury English books on botany indicate thar (his purpos e could also be fulfilled in a less elaborate way by the domestic garden. which developed npidly in popularity between 1600 .nd 1700. Thus at least one book markeled in England in the 16sos was emirled The Ga"frn of Edtll. and many nth er

Green imperialism

terminology associated with the mental and actual constructions of posrRenaissance botanical .and other gardens rends to show that the innovations involved in the emergence of systematic botany were actually strongly connected with the inherent rel~~in' of much natural hisron:, however empirical and accurate its practitioners might have been.

Commercial pressures a.1so helped to bolster botllnical empiricism. From the late sixfeenthcentury onwards, apothecaries' gardens were starring to undergo the transition [rom being repositories of plants collected only for medical reasons to being botanical gardens cultivated from motivations of science and curiosity as well as for their commercial potential. ,Rural agriculturalinnovation during the seventeenth century was increasingly dosely associated with a growth in empirical botanical knowledge and an interest in the ctransfet of crop plants from one country to another. Whi~51 the results of this kind of innovation have been extensively investigated in England, particularly ~.Y loan Thirsk, very little attention has, until recently, been given ro the more global aspects of early crop transfers, particularly in the context of the spice trade." The role of the expansionist colonial empires in promoting botanical gardens played a critical part in this development.

The direct involvement of ~uropean governments. in botanical garden de; velopment beg;'n in Renaiss.ance Northern Italy at the universities in f~~ I!._nd Padua- with me official parmnage of botany by the _govern'!!enrs of Florence m:ur-venice. The universities developed Ilea ching gardens and pioneered the preparation . of 'books' of mounted dried plants,. known as hOTII $j:cci, or 'drs gardens". P~ had II live garden in 1545, Pisa by ~7 and Bologn~. in !567. The teaching method quickly spread northwards: Leldenand Amsterdam had gardens by 1587, Montpellier from 1593 and l:!e~.lberg in 1597.'" F.ro~ t?C outset, such gardens were directed by physicjrni who werealso specialists m botanical study. Many of them, however, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, sought to express ambitious political and religious messages in the la·YQuts of their gardens .. The organisation of the Heidelberg garden is a gooct

garden •. nd herbal IBIlI.rUc:"!.ion boolu; stressed similar themes. See H. Plat, 1!1,t Cardin 'l{ Ed",: or. An ',,",II.D"I. JemipliM of all ]I.rom "ml Imil! no/v grorpi.ng in Eng/am/, London, ,653, and Ihe accoum or the rise in pepulariry or seventeenth-century gardens in K. Thomas, Man WId Ih. naisra! 1JJtJ,1J.

9 Thirsk, £<Dnllmir p<}lity I1ml p'lJjrcir; the main major exception m this rule arc the worksan the ~ic~ trade b)· M~deldn~ Ly-Tle-Pane, especi .. lly MUlln·tiurl/nil Ihe f/l.ior IfIlllt. Z vols.,

• VII; .I_A!II1;;lI.a"'Y,)g-/~.

llil A. G. Morton, A M$I.ry of bQlunirulsdma: An aUmml of Iht dn;(/upm';111 of botllny frortl ullrk"IU limit to tit. pW<ft/ dflY, London, 1981, p, 1 zr, A fuller account of rhe early hiSl()ry of botanical prdcms ;n Europe can be found in Burkill, CI"'p/m ;n Ihr hirlOIJ' of I"dia" bwmy, pp. J-4--

Portuguese and Dutch learn from South-West India.

77

example, especially in the way in which a new knowledge of the tropics was spatially expressed and new religious dispensations were symbolised.' I

Travellers were lQ._Olil advised to obsea.£_ indigenous practice and collect material to extend the European materia medica .. It was counsel such as this that elicited the first major European bonk on Asian.QQ!lIDY. This was compiled by Garcia da Ona, a Portuguese physician who lived in Goa and who intended to compile a d~scriprion or planes in t~e E3S1 and Inc).ia fro~!.~h medicines sold in Europe and in the Portuguese colonial possessions were ;;:-rracted. His book, CfJioquios do: simplese droglH he COUJ(jj medicinais da inrila, was published in Goa in~' It was quickly translated intb Latin (in 15§_71 In' Charles. d'Ec!lIse (C1usius)j who also included with the Orra text a translation ofa medicina.! history of rl~Cl.~." Clusius went on to establish both the Harms Medkus of Emperpr Maximilian in Ykn1!!..and, in 1593, the Leiden botanical garden. His contacts and travels were unusually extensive, and fie !i'ufoduceo 1I1[Q Europe .manLplanrs (tulips, narcissi etc.) from West Asia, the region from which the. concept ~f the quadripartite Europe~n bo;~tanical garden was directly derived. Through his English friends he also introduced many plants from the Americ;,a~,in particular the QQr!!,lQ, which had been brought from Peru by Draks:, Clusius's contacts with England were built upon by his successor, Paul Hermann (who had travelled extensively in the Cape and South Africa), in his CornmcLs with the Chelsea Physic Garden and with the Oxford Botanic Garden, through a friendship with William Sherard. Many studeilts1rom the British Isles flocked to the medical SCh00t at~ to hear the lectures of the great teacher Hermann Boerb.;la_\;e, who also continued Hermann's work in the Leiden garden. The influence of the Leiden garden, with its strong Asian collection and network of contacts, spread as far as Vienna, where the Schiinbrunn gardens were being established by Maria Theresa and her husband. Further afield, the establishment of Dutch .11Q.wer III Cochin on the de~line of Portuguese power in Malabar was lJl_a~ jn

-

II StC Richard Pauerson, 'The Hortus Palarinu s a 1 Heidelberg anll Ih~ refcrmarion of Ihe world',

. JOI'''lOlo[ Card~" History', 1 (lg8!), 67~'04. For, useful related discussion of Ill'rdenli .. nd fem.le power" Soc Sheile FfoII ioe, ')\ queen's g:ardcn or power: C:uherinc de Medici and the locu~ of female rule,' in M. A. Di Cesare, R,~on.lilJ,ring I'" Rmaissane«; Binghammn, N.Y., 199:1·

,~ Garcia da Ono, C~loquioJ dos ,imp/'I r d,ogas h, _"USOs mmidllUIS do Imlio ,"mlmr/os Ptl/o DUlllor Gnrll:.id fill. Q"1I1 t'uIM1!i.hlilld in.. [''M..,.nn rn I\,iti'l::tt.l c,I)":I: Thi", w~t;: the Ihir_d_lmnk nrintfld_hv t.hJ::

I'ofluguese In Ind'~; " was nrst pll·~l1S!>ec In t:.ngilSn as t.olll!qlJlt! "" tnt lllJlf!,es dna "'ug' OJ fmifflbJ' GIl,cia dll On«, ed, and trans, Sir Clements. Markham, F.R.S., London, !913· All p.ge references ·m: rothe 19t3 rranslarion,

Ij The Col"qujo$ W,," a le't included in Clusius's book on e~oLic. entirled El:on,~rum, librr d«rm; An twerp, ! 60 s.

Green imperialism

botanical terms by the Iill<paration of the Horlus indicus Wl!:.la@!.ic_us as a personal project initiated by Hendrik ,!!~d~ tot Drakenstein.'-

The close associarion between Clusius and Garcia da Orta and the connections between van Reede and the Dutch botanical establishment ensured 1Th1t the diffusion of botanical knowledge between South-W_~! Indi ~J.&i..den botanical garden became cen!,"!!,! [Q the whole relationship between European and Asia.o constructions of nature. Because of this, two main texts can be said to He at rhe core of the relationship between European colonial expansion and the diffusion of botanical knowledge: rhe CO/Uljllios qfOrtll and the HartuS nUlla,bariclJ~ of \Ian Reede. In these texts, contemporary Hippocratic emphases on accuracy and efficacy ten~~l_t~E!9E.g!y_ rivileg A .!!!yedi~ ~ru!.. local Malayali medical anll botanical lo.!!:ld zoolo!lli;;!!) knowledge and to lead to effective discrimination against older Arabic, Brahrninical and Eur?'p~n classical texts and systems of cognition in natural history. Inspection of the mode of construction of the Cololjlll!!£' and, even more, of tne Hortu nalaharicus reveals that they are profoundly indigenous 5ext~. ar from being inherently European works, they are acmaUy compilations of Middle Easter!' nnd South Asian ethnobotany, organised on essentially non-European precepts. The existence of European printing, botanical gardens, global networks of information and transfer of materia medica, together with the increasing professionalisarion of natural history, seem actually to have facilitated the diffusion and dominance of a local epistemological hegemony alongside the erosion of older European and Arabic systems. As a direct consequence of this, almost all subsequent substantial 'European' texts on South Asian botany retain the essential indigenous structure of the Coloquiot and the Hanus mala-

barieus.

A word on research methodology may be appropriate here. The historiog-

raphy of botany is not highly developed, despite rhe recent appearance of some very important biographical works, and natural history in general has tended to be the poor relation of other disciplines in the history of science. Because of this, the increasingly vigorous field of environmental history probably represents a more.appropriate area of debate within which [0 set surveys of the hisrery of contact between notionally discrete Asian and European bodie of knowledge about nature and botany in particular.';

As vet, however, we have no overarching accounts of the connections among ecology, science and society for South, South-East or East Asia, although D

q H. A. ~\l:n Reede tot Drskcnstein (.1i3f;-..q1) (referred to here as 'von Recde'), H"rIIlS IIIdlfll< IIwllIh"ri,,,,. rontinnn rtgr'lIIi IIIdl"b'I,i.·i "PIlII f.d". ul~h~rrirlli IImnis grll(ris pig "I". mrillfts, t 1 vols., Amsterdam, Ift7!!~J [henceforth HM).

1 Ii The work of Alfred Crosby on 'ecological imperialism' represents om: especially useful ap. pruach to Sludi;es of interactions among botany, ecololl1' and colcnlsing socierles, but one concelllratlngm.inly..," the colonL~>lion of the 'whitc' Nev World by 'europea.n' rood plant~.

Portuguese and Dutch learn from South-West India

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modest literature is accumulating." Both the biographical approach taken by Heniger and rhe analytical approach [0 rhe study of eolonising institutions taken by Bruno .b!!our are helpful to those attempting histories of cultural constructions of nature." Debates about [he mode of diffusion of botanical knowledge are perhaps most relevant and interesting in addressing a rather more conventional and specific historiography: that which invesrigares the nature of colonial power in Asia in terms of the epistemological and representational. dimensions of societies subject to European colonisation. In this tigtll the botanical 'texts' of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are of'perticulsr value. An essential dimension of historical practice lies in attention to the COntext in which the knowledge and .assumptions of our predecessors were produced. In [he Indian case, caste has been seen as playing a central part in structuring European knowledge of rhe colonised society. Brahminical interpretations and texts have, it has been argued, been reinforced by the colonial situation and have strongly affected European perceptions arid discourses. ,I By contrast, the diffusion of medico-botanical knowledge has tended to privilege non-Brahminical epistemologies and impose an indigenous technical logic, thereby transforming European botanical science. There are sound reasons for this apparent deviation from the mainstream (where colonised societies are dominated through arms, discourse and text), relating primarily to the shared Indo-Arabic-European roots of medical and biological knowledge and [0 the effective technical supremacy of indigenous systems in regional botanical terms, Considerations of roe derivation of texts, location of 'centres of calculation' and the evolution of knowledge networks thus become the mO$1 appropriate tools for understanding the diffusion of biological knowledge in the first centuries of conracr.

The technology of the printed book does, of course, have some significance in the codification of both European and Asian systems of biological and natural knowledge, but more in offering- us a text than in providing a real explanation for epistemolngical dominance.': The number of available or relevant texts involved is very small, while, correspondingly, each has a life of exrraor-

.6 E.S". Mark elvin and Manka Vicziany, 'Ecology and the cconumic hislDry of Asia·, Arion Sluni,s RmtlP. 1990, pp. 39-72; J. Kolhiramby-Wdls, 'Sccio-pcluicsl structures and SouthEast A,ian e<;Q5y.lteJIIIS; A hislOriCllI perspective up to the rnid-nlnereemh century', in Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland, 005., AI;IIH p"",",pli"rlS "f nutur«, Nordic Insriune of Asian Swdj""

_ • ~ ~ • .;1 -- __ ~n_ ..... ~ ........... ~ ...... 11.. lUII"'-". \..ua.j ~'f .. "rr J1I .I1SUllJ rru"rlfons oJ

Ihoughl: E'JdJ'S l!J tll1·ir~m"ttlla/ phi/nil/ph]', "'lb.,,}, N.Y., 1989.

17 J. Heniger, Htntln} Adriaa» VUII Rudr 101 Drakr,,<w1I 'mJ 'Hortus Mu/ahdri(",': A mlllribuIIDn ,/0 Iltt mull' of DU/d, ,·o/",,;al boult/y, Rorterdam, 1986,

18 See e.g, R051llind O'Hanlon, 'Cultuses of rule, communities or resisrance: Gender, discourse and tradition in South Asi.n hisroriographies'. Suriul AIII,!",il. no. 25 (Sep« 1989).

19 C. R. Bo x er, E,\wlir prill/ing 'IJIJ Ihr 'XPIJ"SJlIIJ I{ Europr, I 4rp-1lJ.jo. Bloomington, lnd., 197~.

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dinary influence and longevity, fa.r more than is the case wjth,~or e~ample, narrative histories, Far from imposing European systems of classifi~tlOn and perception on South Asia, the invention of printing and .the collatlo~of regional botanical knowledge actually provided an ~ppo:rIiIl1lty for the diffusion of indigenous South Asian methodologies of classification throughout the European world, rather than the reverse. T~e division between E~ropea.n. a.nd Asian botanical systems is anyway an ar\)Itrary one. A more 10gl~ division might be between Arabic and Hindu/local botanic~l, sY5te~~, Taking,3 broad perspective, the epistemological. textual and 'cogtutlve ongins of wnnen accounts of South Asian botany between about A.D. 700 and 1800 find a cent~e of balance well to the east of Venice." Initially, perhaps,. one ne~ to explain the resilience and potency of Avicenna and the Alexandrine schocl 10 accounts

of South Asia.

The dominance of low-caste epistemologies and affinities in. the diffusion of Asian botanical knowledge after 1534

These questions all arise in a !~ualal1a)l§is of Gar~ da Orta',S Col!!9!!ios, The original text of 1 & (later transformed in the Larin translat1o~ by C!u" sius)" is highly ambivalent and self-r~velarory, sim~ltaneousl~,heaylly ~~lym!S on and critically evaluating_the claSSical and Arab l.I.tD,ontles. ?rt~ 5 emphasis on ~rsonal medical experience, local field obServation and mdlgenous knowled~ was not typical of the time, This aspect of ana's text was ~rst recognised and approved of by Clusius and has ~?re ,recemly been recognised by Boxer for its wider historical value." The privileging of European learn~ng and preconceptions, as Garcia da Orta makes clear, ca~ only lead t~ medical failure. The text is also, however, affected by the delicate balance in power reiario,ns among the Euro21~lm_!l!ty!i_cil!l;l., the ,ly1~ all:d the lo.cal Arab or Persian doctor. Orta's scientific insights are gamed through becorning part or this pattern of p~t:ronageand subordination as well .35 through person.a! friendship. This last factor is nor a slight one (as we ,s~all see m,uch more 1fl the case of van Reede), since friendship may allow critical enr:r _Into guarde~ and compartmented local systems of knowledge. Charact<er1S~caU~, On3,s sources are multifarious, while he does not neglect a health,Y es:nnanon of h~l:i ______ "", .. :~"" ~~ ~_ ""'''''''' ~.,." .. h,. ,.t;lic!.'t .... "n n( nrnu.s: In his own exoen-

mental fruit and drug gardens (tbesc_ being essentially a MugbaJ mnovallOI'l

21) Sec Burkill, C~(lp/m in Ihe his/ury of J"dia" botany, p, 3· . ..'

3.1 Clu~iu5'S own snnerated copy of the CO/Olluios is held b)"~bndge ~mversu~ L,bri:.Y"Dia_ ;n C. R. Boxer, 'Two pioneers of tropical medicine: Garcia d'Oru and NICOlas Monardes ,

11I~!lU. 14 (I'{6J), 1-33,

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.in J!ndia). Through the efficacious treatment of important patrons, Orta gained access to new knowledge from other, mainly Arab, physicians. This accumuJation of Dew knowiedge, balanced against older texts, created the conditions for a reasoned critique of the kind which ~l~ius, urchasing OIta~s text in Lisbon in 1566, found particularly attractive, The book was intended for sale, significantly, in both India and Europe.

The structure of the Coloquios, in the f9.rm..2. '3, g.i_a!.O·K!l_ l1et '~n O~, nd,

an imaginary interrog~ror scepti~ ofne'f' !,2d l\!d~~nou.s lrno\'{ledge (possibly himself as a young student), actually creates a dialectic and a creative tension and invites internal debate about the relative merits of entirely different sources of medico-botanical knowledge. In general the text is remarkably subversive lind even hostile to European and Arabic knowledge, regarding it as superfluous in the face of the wealth of accurate local knowledge. The reader becomes aware of a dialogue developing at several levels, some more hidden than others, in which Orta allows his own position to remain publicly indeterminate .. We may be allowed, I think, to make a connection between the subversive element of the text and the personal problematic and ambivalence in Drta's Status as a hjdden l~v, a. status he retained only with difficulty and which his family failed to rerain.v

Orta soon shifted his basic allegiance away from the Portuguese government (in the person of Martin Afonso de Sousa) to Burhan _N_il.!!ill S..h!1:!.t iza~ in the text) and hence interacted with the other physicians employed by the Shah ~~~Balagate' (A~ma9.11.!!g_l!r or p'!1llghau, to whom 'he gives large rents'." These doctors, Orta notes, knew 'Hypocras Galen, Aris~otle and .. Plato','$ 'I was taught', he tells us, 'by the Kho;asanLRbysic'ia,n in his [the Shah's] employrnent.' However, eventually Qra'[..2.'W _kn. wledgs,..h~_imRlies, is bet~, essentially because it is more Iuralistlc, Occasionally, he says, 'small people like me reveal things which great peopie, , . could not explain'. Rather than relying 01'1 the static learning of antique authorities, Dna thus advocates a continual accretion of new learning. 'Please God', Orta adds, 'we will continue to search for and enquire about medicines,' Far preferable to the position of the Arab doctor, he asserts" is the position of the Indian doctors 'who do not know physic through the Arabic books', 'Dr Orta', he says of himself in the dialogue with Ruano 'often knows better than all of us, for we only know the Gentoos, but he knows Christians, Moors and Genroos better than all of us,' However, given the choice between Christian and Arab authorities, Orta un-

2) There is • further element, gender \ which should nOI be ignored. S~me or the £i>Jleq~I1~~ mUSl of the camlu~ of Orta'S "P"!'imens_w.!i,re plf:ried OUI by Antpnia, • loal Konkani

'slne-s:iJ:l': DrlA, Colvqm'm. ~. xiii. - - _

14 Ibid .. p. 7.

15 Ibid, p. 10,

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hesitatingly chooses the larrer. ' ow let us examine', he proposes, 'the writers commencing with the Arabs, for with them we are on more certain ground ... the Greeks having more learning and the invention of good letters'. '1 have friendly relations', he goes on to remind the reader, with physicians of Cairo and Damascus.' Finally Orta makes a startling attack on the lack of any scientific agenda on the part of rhe Portuguese establishment:

The Portuguese. who navigate over a greater parr of the world. only procure :I knowledge of how best to dispose of tha: merchandise. of what they bring there and what they shall take back. They are not desirous of knowing anything about the things in the countries Ihey visit. If the)' know a product they do not seek [0 learn from What tree it comes, and if they see il they do nOI compare it with one of OUT Indian trees [sir]. nor ask about its fruit or what it is like.'·

Garcia da Orta's personal identification with India is reflected, too, in the approbation he grants specifically ro Malayali doctors and their medicine. '1 will take you', he suggests to Ruano, 'to see patients cured by MaJayalims and Canarese, that you may know it [physic] more thoroughJy.' He adds an important caveat, warning that it is very difficult to obtain information from Malayali do£rorF' This difficulty in acquiTing- access [Q privileged information arose later, too, for van Reede in the course of the compilation of the Hortus ma/ubarirus, although he seems to have dealt with the difficulty more suecessfuUy. Orta was probably too closely identified with MusLim,Power to attain such access.

Orta's initial dependence on Arabian classification systems reflects the centre of gravity of the international trade in materia medica based on Venice and the Levant. 'Much comes to India', Orta says, 'from Arabia and Abexim [Axim in Ethiopia].' '1 was taught', he constantly reiterates, as though trying. to locate his professional identity, 'by the Arabian and Khorasani physicians' in me Nizamoxa's employ.'· Correspondingly European knowledge is further marginalised by Orta himself. Even orthern India, in practice, becomes of marginal significance to the reality of medical practice in Southern India. 'At Goa', he stares, 'doctors are very little COnversant with things in Delhi." Wha.t does this amount tor Essentially that Orta himself, based in Goa (but, we should note, isolated on his own land on an island at Bombairn). relies on the patronage of a Muslim prince to achieve access to knowledge, but, having

.--' -.~ ...------- - .--J- ---~-I ---u-

z6 ibid.. pp. 86-"

"'7 AlthoLigh he adds (p. 97) thai 'we stick [0 [he Malayali names, because this was the fim land

we knew'.

z8 Ibid •• p. 3Q6, 29 Ibid .• 'p, 483.

Portuguese-and Dutch learn from Sou th- West I ndia

alent and. even autonomous actor, His position is symbolised by the the device of the dialogue in the ten itself, with irs harsh critique of rhe West and Western s.y~te~s of cJass~l1cation and irs assertion of the value of the empirical and the situational and. In essence, its presentation or the case for local ethnobotany, Orta's situation is also symbolised bv his position on Goa ph . II

diacenr rn hi .". . ysica y

a .Iacem ro .b~~.mcal ggrden, This garden, and Orta himself (Isolated

without. any academy as such). cmergs, then, ,as a Jill~ ersonal centre of calculauon,. ~uspe.DlJe~~ between botanical traditions, drawing&;m - ma~y sou.rces, o~ten arbitrarily, and dissatisfied with most of them, continually debanng. then value but alw~,YS favouring local knowledge. The testimony of an eye-w.ltness we are told, IS worth more tha"n any other authority'.

. Incidentally, this was a view that sat uncomfortably with Brah~inicaJ teachm~, so thar ,lye canner simply equate 'ernpirical/technlcal knowledge' with Hindu or Indian k.nowledge. One is left with a somewhat ramalising question:

To \Vh.at exte~t. did Orrs ever gain access to MaJay:t1im and especially nonBrahmin medicine and plant knowledge in South-West India? The answer appears :0 be that .he. achieved very little substantial access. And despire his ~rotesta[lOnS, Orta g:llned little from other "Gentoo' contacts during his travels an other parts of India, As O. M. Jaggi has noted, the flow of medico-botanical Itno~vledge 'betw~en castes' woul~ve. been very Tirrdtc_cI. in this period.> tnd[g:enous technical knowl!:9!!e !emained firmly cornpartmenred in the sixteenth century. Orra was, indeed, peculiar])' aware orcasre-i~sorar ~'s ir affected presu~p[j~ns o.f power. over rhe natural world, dwelling alone stage in the Cr;{oquro:. III hIS .desc.np[Jon of Baccaim (Bassc'in), on the precise roles of Curumb~s (kumari (s~[ftingJ cultivators of the Western Ghats) and Malis, the Iart~r being of great Interest to him in their 'role as gardeners and fruit-tree cultivators,

, Orta was probably too closely identified with the establishment of the Muslim ~ultan.Bahadur for him to gain easy access to Malayali knowredge.» Even so, his e9sltlon as personal physician ro the sultan and the Nizarnoxa do allow us t~ explain ~he ~atively autono~o~nature of Orr a's text. In terms of power relal!O~s, the Im~alance lies not in the way in which the Co/uquins is structured as a. discourse, lor it represents an amalgam of Arabic and local knowledge, but in lhe, m5_Jde by which the text is transmitted: as 3 printed book (perhaps ~Ie most ImpOrtaQl ever QUQhsh~ by rhe Portuguese il1 lodia, according ro c.. ~. Boxer) and as information inserted into a relatively pri~ileged pre-

pYI<tt'"'"" ~o.""""'.P':J._I. '" _,.,.,__ '0. . , , '"' -

!or.:cdi~nl gardens and an established pattern -of_e}arH-;nd d!_ug tta~-:: .!!:!::. At this stage the network was not at all exclusively dominated by Euro-

30 Aj'unmlll; /mlilllt systen: nfmet/,rill(, Delhi, '981. 31 Orm, CO!0'lUIOJ, p, +7+.

Green imperialism

peans, except on the longest routes between India, West Africa and the Wesr Indies, Essentially, the rortuguese networks were marg-in.11 extensions of an existing Indian Ocean sysrem of plant transfer. The C%qllios, then, is an earlY exercise in ethno-borany, Similarly, Ona's role as a doctor utilising contemporary plant knowled e in India (with an unwillin[ bias to~~ MUslim SX~terns prefigt!l'ed the pioneering role played by !lther lone European doctors emeloyed by Indian potentates in promoting and utilising indigenous teculiZal knowledge, Ho,!!$sber~ and Johann Koenig being the two outstanding examples in the first decades of East India Company rule."

Burkill has described the critical parr played by Clusius in exploiting this phenomenon by evaluating Orta's text and using it as part of his attempt [Q move towards the empirical and indigenous in both European and tropical plant knowledge.n More important." Clusius s early adoption of Ortn reinforced the primacy or the Leiden garden in tropical botany, J;l.cob Bondi, for example, relied heavily on the Coloql1ios for his pioneering excursion into tropical medicine, the De medicina lndorum, published at Leiden in I 642.J' Reliance on indigenous local knowledge in Europe carne significantly later, however, rhan was the case in the colonial context, being pioneered particularly by Commenius at the University of Sarospatak in Eastern Hungary. However, while Garcia da Orta was able very quickly to discard theintellecruai baggage of Dioscorides and other ancient authorities it proved far more difficult for such.men as Clusius to do the same in Europe.

Thus when VEl Reed!;, in the aftermath or the dis placement of the Portuguese in South-West India, took an independent decision to compile a new materia. medica for the region, largely in response to Vereinigte Oost-lndische Compagnie (VOC) medical needs\ he was unable to rely on any pre-existing European template or model of technical organisation for assembling South Asian plant knowledge, A variety of exhaustive accounts now enable us 10 chart the ideological and practical history of the compilation of the HI) rtu I malabaricus, the accounts by Heniger, Manilal and Fournier being the most signifieam.» However, it needs to be very clearly stated that these writers have

p For detsils of Honigsbergcr and Konig, see Chapter 7. JJ Burkill, Chaptm ,. ,II, hi,wTJ' ,{'",Ii,,,, '",'any, pp. 5-6·

H See A» """.1101 'if tnt <iu(asa. natural hi$lj'TJ' urr,{ medirinr uJ III, EdII b"li es , IrIua/aud Fum tlrr Latin ~rJII11I(S B""fius, physici"" ;0 IIII! Dmdl Stll/mw,1 "I BIII£I71/0, I" whIch ur« u,hltd unnt» tutions by ~ phyucrml, London, [769. Pp, ,65-23' of [his book constitute on 'animadversion

"til tiitlfJI J~ ()Yll-II"/;'<I,, C(lrllpagnit m Nrt!frhlllll'srh-b,Ji(, Amsterdam, 1929, pp. 1[9-30.

.15 Heniger, Villi Rmlt; K. S, Manilal, C. R. Suresh and V, V. Sivarai~n, 'A re-investigarion of (he plants described in ~Rheede's H!,,1I/1 "m/"burirm: An inrroductory report', Taxn»; ~.6 ('977), S,4·9-50; K, S. Man il.a I , ed., BOla"], Iwd hj,'o1J' nf 'Hortus "'<llubufj&w', New Delhi, I y1l9; K. S. IVlnnilal, 'The epigl'3[1hy of me Malayalam certificates in Horua malabari,·"s', in Manilal, BM""), and )ust •. rj', pp. 113-20; M. Fournier, 'Hendrik val:l Reede lot Drakenstein

Portuguese and Dutch Jearn from South-West India

BS

Pn:~v~eaIIJ hbee£n ,choncerned. t~ i~entify the wider historical significance of the r 0 tne 7. ava affinities In the text f h H

chat it im Ii. fI~" x ? ~ t e ortus malab(mCIIs, with all

doubt rtt! ~ o~ ~sertlon of Ezhllva claSSificatory superiority. There is lirtle

, en fl ,van Reede was largely responsible for rhus eleva tin

~zhafva kd~owledge, With ,the straightforwa.rd aim of acquiring the highest qua':

I y or m igenous expertise.

Van Reede's father had b ~ hi f . .

e . I d .~ '. cen.! c Ie for~ In rhe 'echerlands and rhe

monona an aesrhetic I1TI act of rh: 1I.'{"1 I.. 'f".' '

vital rId' ,..- . ---. L.W/-. a).'11. '.!li1tSI cnvrronmenr played a

• ,0 e, secor mg to van Reede himself, in encouraging him to emb . k

a project on the enorm I f b ar on b . ~ ou~ sea e 0 t e Hortus ma'aha.n·""s,~t, As he makes clear

t e co~merclal and medical potential role of the }jarlus \ I "

s.ubordmate to the aesthetic !»'h,en it came to motivation." ~~c~r:os~;~~r~!~

non of the plams. became a priority for van Reede This . Y h P

away Th . r u ~ , I •• may give r e game

. e project 0 ~ the HOI'tIl.1 was strongly connected with the str ~

temp~rary shift which took place in the Netherlands towards. ong coodescribe rh . "J d . a concern to natural wor~d empincn a~ accurately ~epiC[ an increasingly highly valued

out the cl . Van. R~ede ~ ow." account IS very helpful here in acrual spelling

ose aSSOC13tJons tn his own mind b rwee th .

of the Mal b fi .' e ween an aes enc appreciation

a ar crests and a Wish to 'J' d'

the 0 hi cornpi e III rgenous knowledge about

rn. u IS tours of Malabar he ofi h d .

I f d d ~ . •. , ten a occasion to travel through 'large

l:ut: :;ic ense forests'_'J~ T~ey were pleasing, he adds, 'through the ma~vel~

t tYf °thf the tree~, W~lch was so great lliult it would be difficult to find

wo trees 0 e same kind In rh f if

S' ific: " ~ e same crest I 'one were to search for this' .w

igru I(:a,mly, h~ describes rhe forests in the language of Durch urban arch'irecrure, One might regard One such tree', he writes,

as a magnificent, elegant and delightful palace, whose vaults were su :orled by as many col limns as one could discern branches. And in su~~

hP~lacle a great many people could easily be sheltered in order 10 shun [ e me CJnfnllY of rhe eli' [ fi .

f h ~ rna e, or l1lstancc excessive showers and [he heat

o t e sun, and thus these fotests were like 2 house or very elegant rr

lure rather than virgin foresrs,» s uc-

The connecrion made he e b 'I '

the . 'I al ~ r etween pa ace and forest IS especially vivid But

SI)TII e so expresses an underlying fe.ar about the feroci ty of an ~nre-

of Hendrik van Reedc [(,H Dr ker ~::~~-.: ... - .. ·,oJ, \4.,/U" ~II-V •.. Jlu 'III;: tl"UJU.) If1l4lUCJUnUli

36 H'" ra enstem I In Monotal, Boranj' allil hiSlory pp f>-~I

enlger, .. Q/I Rallt, p. 3, •. .

37 Van Reede, Preface to HJ,1 vol. j p v

J8 Ibid. " . ~

39 fbid~

¥> Ibid.

6 Green imperialism

8 b'r

. h arts of his preface, van Reede remarks on the a 1,l.ty

strained duna~e. In ot er p . he \' , d colonise an otherwise hostile

b .L t oderate tee imate an

of the forest otn Q m ks h em arks 'abounded neverthe-

d • he most barren roc , e T, d

rocky lan scape. , .. . f t ees and herbs.': Van Ree e

. h th I dour of a rich vegetatIOn 0 r d d

less wit e sp en . nor ofrhe palace our into the garden. In ee ,

went on [Q extend the, metaMP I b a arden, 'Every land and field', he he actually conceptuahsed ~

recalls,

, d dI so much with plants and trees of every

extending into the plams abollil e fore ) d radiated such rertiUry, that kind, (!IS I have said 0. f the above crests), an I'd by the careful hand

. erned to have been cu nvaie

mde, ed every piece se d' '.y elegant order Indeed even the,

d ' II plante in a ver .

of some gar eaer an, r about this, the marshes, nay the VeIY bord~rs

pools, and one may "on.de di laved several plarus with which

or the rivers I whi~~=p;:~e~l~o::~~. ~~,e;e was no' place, not even tho:

they v ere a rnos ~

smallest, whidfl did not display some plants.

Reede and. more than just that, a 'garden MalabaT, then, was.a garden for van bel' " he said that 'this part of India

1d' "This had led me to .1eve,., ,

of the war .., ' . . fe 'I . [of the whole world and thal It was

I d 'ghtly the most tern e ar - -' C I )

was tru y an rt _- -b (h'ch now~s is C3.lled ey on,

largely simjlar to t,Ql':.i!!:Ei.2!.Ta. ro a:.a.~ wthle s~;;;;' climate as the Malabar

. -II h t art which IS Situate in •

especla y to rna pa h d b 'ween Malabar and an islan a

. 'Th inection was t us' ma e erv - .

region. <l . e ,Sonne___, , d u bl t resist His mental construction

. h ' Reede seerne una eo· . .

connection t at van d d hi towards a more comprehensive

den persua e irn '

of the land.sca~e as 3 gar d e and eo l~ and among forests" p~..!.e,

set of ,connections benveen Ian sc~ .. -- 9_ h ve a decisive impact on

--- I h S h assocllltJons were ro av

medicine _a~_l!~!_. ~_c __ " ---:-' peciall:t when van Reede encoun-

Dutch colonial r~onses !2 delorestatlon, es - -

tered the Cape environment in 168t k on a value other than purely

In this kind of thmkmg, too, pants [00, " of contemporary paint-

. ' 'even a cursory mspeccon

medicinal or econormc, as . I' hv in the course of organ-

k I This may help us to exp am w " . kl

ings maxes c ear. '1 I b ·eIIS van Reede moved quic Y

ising the appropriately named} .Ol'tus ma Ii- a~1 th~ end of each of which he through three chronological, proJect stagg, hollv Malayali clas-

f E pean precepts and nearer to a w _- - . -

moved farther rom • uro r the search for botanical aCClffilCY

sification of plants, largely a consequence 0

tI rrom TUlicorin to 'Travanccre through high 4' Ibid. Van R~'ede refers here leoO at tr~P\ ~;~~ Ref: Inv. no, 1142, pp. 702-831, quoted in

mounlain areas (Nerherlands onl" ,

Heniger, Vdn R"Jt, p. +3)' . _ izer

R d tiM 111 P ,. (translation by J, He.llg ~.

41 Vun ee e, ,,'

43 Ibid.

Portuguese and Dutch learn from South-West India 87

and medical efficacy, but also as a consequence of an emerging attitude to narure.«

Working more than a century after aria wrote [he Coloquias, van Reede went through the same process of rejecting Arabic classification and nomenclarure and European knowledge in favour of a more rigorous adherence to local systems of classification." His own attempts at running an eXJlerimenlal garden had not been vC;ry Sllj::I;~,ssfJJl. That his approach was innovative and experimental was already demonstrated by his, foundin a la [ _o:...a~ company policy, to process cinnamon o'l~' This willingness to experiment is also reflected in the way in which van Reede was able to adapt indigenous institutions [0 the medical and broader scientific agenda of the Hortus malabaricus. It took him only two years to reject rhe J,!crJ't_'!.dologies of plant description represented by the Viridarium orientale of Father Mathew Q[ SI. Joseph, a Europeg,n ootanlSt.TnTri'ft!;"eetings bet~ee~ thu;; had taken place in [673 and 1674.<7 By April 1675, however, certificates published in the Hortns malabaricus itself indicate that van Reede had already shif£:_d entirely m a reliance on Mahwah sources and, initially, to he professional expertise offerea by three 'Brahrni;;s' Ranga Bhart, Vinayaka Bhart and_Ap.1,l Bhart, as well as 3 MiilayaLi physician, Ittl Achuden, who was an Ezhava doctor of [he Mouton toaSt of1\,fal:ibar.,M Van Reed;;s ~wn writings show q~i[e Clearly that Achuderi played a major_ role as ultimate arbiter of botanical accuracy and correct identification. This was because the Dutchman soon found that the ~_tlll1ic:31 learning of the Brnhminll J!@Lin fact uits.,_we and enrirely dependent on the rest.1temenr of dictums from old texts." For any useful field identification or collection of particular plants desired by van Reede and the H()rIIlS board, the Brahmins were forced to rely on the much greater field knowledge of their iow-caste servants. Their knowledge of natural science WIIS, as far as van Reede was concerned, merely academic, It thus made sense to bypass the Brahmins. For field collection, therefore, complete reliance was placed on

certain men who were experts in plants, who were entrusted with COoIleering for us finally [rom everywhere the plants, wkh the leaves, flowers and fruu, for which they even climbed the highest tops of tilt trees.

¥I Ibid .• pp. iv-v,

~

~6 lbid., p. +1. 47 Ibid" p. 40, 48 Ibid., p. 43.

~'" lbid., p. '41: iCC also M fou.micr, 'Enterprise in bruany: Vnn Reedc and hi. HO'f<I, ;.r"/IIbaricus", rJrd",,,s of Notural HUM')', 14 (1987), 123-5 • un-J)8.

88 Green imperialism

Having generally divided 'them into groups of three, I sent [hem [0 some forest. Three or four 2!i!l.tCtS, who stayed with me in a convenient place, lit once ccurately depicred me living plants re;ldily brought by the col~ To these pictures a description wa added nearly always in my presence.e'

From this passage one may conclude that van Reede never made a herbarium of Malabar plants.s It was van Reede's contact with these Ezhava collectors, of'rhe 'toddy-tapper' caste, adept both at tree climbing and plant identification, that seems to have awoken him to the wider value of the knowledge possessed by this casteY Among them we're families of Vaidyar traditional doctors, highly esteemed Ayurvedic mediCal EJ'actici;~~~, 'whose -;'c~~Pationwa... passed down a lineage from father [0 son, along with bulky collections of books and papers containing hundreds of years' worth of accumulated medicobotanical knowledge. Itti Achuden was probably the best-known of these lowcaste Vaidyar physicians.

The epigraphy of the Aryazurhu and Kolezuthu Malayalam script certificates appended to the original printed editions of the Hortus ma/cl/lruicus provides us with a surprising amount of further data. OD the identity of Achuden and his sources of skill.» A translation of what Emmanuel Carneiro wrote (originally in Aryazuthu script) states that the certificate is

as intended by Emmanuel Carneiro, the interpreter of the Honourable Company, born, married and residing at Cochin. According to the Command or Commodore Henrik van RJ1Cede, the trees shrubs, twiners .and herbs and their Rowers, [ru its, seeds, juices and roots and their powers and properties described in the famed book of the malayalee physician born at Carrapurram, of tile Ezhava caste and of the name Colledan, have

50 VBn Reede, HM, nr, p. viii (trans, Heniger, Vii" R<tdr, p. 4;),

~ I See the discussion of the 1 a-vel, herbarium P/<1IlIIU mulabanca« (~! Giiuing~n) by N. johnston, 'Still no herbarium records for Hortus ma/u~uricIrJ,' T"~·nII. 19 (1970), 665.

52 The Ezhavas were a Sudra C'2Stc whose trnditicnal occupation was toddy tapping, M~ny of [hem had an exrenslve knowledge of we rnedieinal "line of plantsand, like It ti Achuden, were Ayurvedic physicians very highly regarded by the community .. Known as Vaid)'~rs. these physicians based their knowledge on the works of their ancestors, who were also physicians, and the knowledge was thus handed down [roro generation 10 generation, Irti Aehudcn's (eXIS

._ 'V _..1 -., ... ~ "'_;"""t "' ... "" .h.,.. -In.wrr c-r.'ttt,c:; used, fQ~ [hey were prevented from

learning rhe more Sanskrhised Aryazuthu scnpt \l'mcn was me p'~.""" ... ' u .... u,.,_ _~ of ~iTS and Nambudris. F-or details of the Malay.lam of (he period, see A. Govindakutty, 'Some ob.erv3tions on sevemeenth century Mal~l'ut.m·, 1,.,llJ-lmnialJ J"U.f1IiJI. 25 (lg83). Z4'- 73·

S3 See van Reedc, HM, vol. I. The translation is [hat provided in Ma.nU.I, BOlan), and history,

pp. 113-20.

Portuguese and Dutch learn from .south-West India been dictated separalely in Portuguese language and M I

Thus, for writing this trumfullv wilh a lIya~a;n language. [Altesled 20 April 1675] ., our any doubr, my sIgnature: ...

Ach.uden's Own certificate (or.iginaHy In K

manon: olezurhu script) gives mare infor-

As intended by we hereditary Malaba h ,.

of CoddacarnpaJli village of Ca. r p YS1CIan ~rn at. Goliad;! house Come to Cochin fo ( h drrapurma and residing therein. Having

and ha.vimg examin:d ~~e ltr:e:r s~r. O! Co,~modore Hendrik Van Rheede described in Ihis book rh d' .' u. s, twiners, herbs and seeds varieties

of [hem known from ~ur ~~o~~C:I~~jo;;:.or and the rrea~ent with each nores and explained in detail to M. . ssificd ?li III [h~ Illustrations nnd Hon. Campan.,. Clearing uoub ' [~nuclh Carneiro, the Interpreter of the

" , .. U IS SIC] t ~IS su .. d h . Ii

accepted withoul any doubt bv he zem] pp re t e III ormation as April 1675] . ) t e gentlemen of Malabar" [Attesred 20

~chuden appears to have given an over-mode ., .

mvesrigation allows one to can. cl d h h Sf accounr of hunself. Careful

u e t 3 r t e Conten I f 17. .

Was far more inf)uenced by va R d' E a or/us malabar/ellS

an ee e s zhava coll, b h'

eccoums suggest. In practice A h d" "" a orators r an hIS own

actually selected tbe plams that ~e~e ~: ~dd hIS fellow Ezha".a !:!..et: climbers book and disclosed rneir~es for rhe Pla~rs :a~~n an~ he~ce Lncl~4.i.!!"[h"e edge about the virtues and _. r h' I . S0. COTIt.nlmted their knowl-

n... us .. s 0 I e pants t\1 '

sequent history of tropica! b t '1':' OS! nnporranr for the sub-

affi.lli[ics among a lar . nu 0 an~, t te i.nslghr of the Ezhllvas into the ve"iled by the nameS"~cy n!p~~ 01 ~!ants In the Norms I/Itl/abarims are reand to which ~~;. '~~rcgap~:fi[:e: aose sdPdecdies "whiCh have the s~e Stem

,. . s nre a e: tor example 0 --V""'"

onapu, and 1 sJen--{)napu ,~ The I _ , napu, 3111-

. , . names 1I so g'lVC us a 'd b

incidental sociOlogical materia]. For 0 . . . co!lli....!:!:!_ leJ!~2!

which this pardcula~ flower ~ould bcn:~~d O;am IS rhc_.lulTvest f~st}vaJ in true social affirmies oTtJie-- j ~ . he names thus preserve the [exuess arbitrary category :s a:t Un3me lnbsrcb<ld of Iso_lating them in a con-

_, . ,ea pro a Iy allow .

terms of pharmacological prope ri as A A mg a truer affinity ill

L . TI es, ' . s Arnold Sven a d J C '.

elden 0 arranged [he sequence f I. ." n an ommehn In

which the Ezh3Y3 111,SUm d h 0 IP ants m HorlllS walabaricllS that those

, if" to e r(" ~t('rl ll'PIt"A tT"P-'1II..:o.n .Hu:'O""~."It<;u_11U. I "r

we e-uropeans Knew thIS to be Contrary to their Own classificatory system)

54 Von Reede, H.W, IV, pis ... 7""'9.

55 Correspondence with K K S .

. " uml[tn, V.ch,lr Kerorh House, T.lli~he".y,

90

Green imperialism

the knowledge of the Ezhava has directly influenced the classifications of Hortus malabaricus,5h

Similarly, it h s directly influenced the man}' historically and botanically important texts that have relied heavily on the Hartus. Linnaeus, in particular, in 1740 fully adopted the Ezhavll classification and affinities in establishing 240 entirely new species, as aId Adanson (1763)~us!lieu (£789), Dennstcdr (18r8) and Haskarl (r867) in their work_s' In India, Roxburgh, BuchananHamilton and Hooker all relied on the' same Ezhava structures. Unfortunately, despite the searches or Manila! and his colleagues, the ancestral papers of Irti Achuden at Collada House .seem [Q be permanently losus Unless they are found in future, the Hanus malabaricus appears to remain the only faithful textual record of the, accumulated Ezhava botanical knowledge of me seventeenth century. It needs to be stressed that this was made possible only through the innovative and diplomatic ability of van Reede in establish!" me board of fifteen botanical 'experts' on the indigenous lines of the Royal Council of Cochlll, orwFiiCh-1leha at one time beena member. Continuity and survival of local knowledge in a printed text were therefore closely associated with the survival and successful co-option of an indigenous institution.

Ultimately about 780 species of the most important plants of Malabar were described in HOTlus malg/lariEus, supported by 794 iIIustl'ations_ Although botanical explorations were being undertaken in many pans or tne world at that time, almost no reliable information was available on South or South-East Asia, so that with HOT/US malabaricus van Reede could fill that huge gap at 1I stroke. Together with the- Herbarium ambotnense of Rumphius (1628-1702), the Hanus malabaricus immediately e tablished Holland as the centre of rropical botany.« This was further strengthened by the ~rival of Linnae~_ Leiden, where he (.'OmEletep ~ stud.is§..i1!1<:!erJohannes B~H!!!!!!!!: ... a~~ ~ Burmann in pgrticular e~c~~)l;ed the study of rhe HOT/US mahlbaritl!J and also brought about the establishment of a botanical garden In Jnva.""

.-.---. - -- -~- - -

56 Arnold Syen (164f}-78) and Jan Commelin (1614---9z) collaborated clo~cly in Leiden in assembling marerials for [be H"rIUl malabariflls, adding their own extensive commentaries and emphases.

S7 C. Linnaeus, Floru ::qlulli<'o sislm~ pitUllu$ IIIdirus U)IIIIlIIflit ",s"llIt. Smckholm, 1741; ..... W.

Densredt, S,'I,liiml J:Jms 'Homn muluhurims'; "da, DrtilurMI RtgilW::'/I die,,'" 11'" ... Wcimu, LQ."l

58 I). H NIcolson, L. K. suresn ann ft.. ~. (\'UUltIaI VI', "".~fJ"r-Hl;"1II VJ , n ~ H _ ...

m~/uhuri,'us'. Kenigsteln, [1}88. pp. [-2Z) Slate thai the paper! at Cullada House, in A!!epey district, were alleged 10 In,'c 1)1:1:.0 IOSI 'seven )'ears ago'.

51} Sec E. M. Beekman, ed, Th, pillIon tre«: SdUI(f/ ,"n'/lffgs of Rumphills all 1M lIall/rill /listory 'of llir Indi a , Amhersl, Mass" 1981.

60 Before this the [f.lCdens >1 Kaap Srad, Mauritius and Peredeniya were the onl.) realisations of

Portuguese and Dutch learn from South-West India

91

Further developments in rile eighteenth century: The establishment of Dutch, French and British botanical networks

The achievement of the Dutch-Ezhava alliance ar the colonial centre or calculation in Cochin and the botanical network based on Leiden the Cape, Malabar and Batavin provided both the intellectual and informationarb~ rhe- model for subsequent botanical developments il1 the Briti~h and F.rencJ! colonial empires of the next century. The Dutch, and more particularly the Leiden, intellectual background was indispensable to the emergence of new networks of acclimatisation gardens under [he direction of the Comte de BuffQn.and Sir Joseph Banks and their colonia! correspondents. The links with Leiden were very direct in terms of economic botany _ Antoine de Jussieu, for example, first described the coffee ..I2la~1 from seed own in the Leiden garden. The deliberate reliance on the best sources of indigenous botanical knowledge presaged in Orta and put into effect by van Reede, as a direct consequence of the medical rather than commercial significance of much plant knowledge, continued to exert a critical influence on colonial botany. It led, above all, to the direct employment, in situ, of professional naturalists by the French and English as well as Dutch East India com panics, These naturalists, following Dutch methods, were often instructed to collect as much indigenous information as possible. Their postings, often as supervisors of botanical gardens, ensured mat indigenous: knowledge as exhaustive as the Ezhava tradition co-opted by van Reede would continue to find its way into the floras and materia medica of the colonial states, albeit frequently turned to more mercantile uses,

Not surprisingly, it was the Leiden and Amsterdam gardens rha: soon established a very distinctive dominance in the whole field of European and colonial botany and a pattern soon imitated in other countries. 1n [his way the main botanical gardens and medical schools at Paris, Oxford and Edinburgh were all founded on me Leidcn model, and the Chelsea Physic Garden was much strengthened through i't contacts with Leiden." The remarkable religious tolerance of the Iniversiry of Leiden was one reason for this, since it encouraged students of any creed - Jewish, Roman Catholic, Anabaptist, Anglican, Calvinist, Lutheran, Quaker etc, - to come to study medicine in a country little ravaged by war after the aitainrnenr of independence and at this period the most learned in Europe.

the kind Dr hurtus thai Van Reede seem, to have had in mind. Their nerworking, however, was vIlS1Jy 'nfcriQ[ to Ihul I.ler "er up by the French.

61 \V. T. Stearn, Th« jlljlulIIU 0 Lty til ,,11 I//(JrlY '" till ,ntnUtIIlh J1Jld dghlrmlh rmturus, Leidse Vcerdraduen 37. Leiden, [(;161.

Green imperialism

Plate 4. An engraving or Cape Town made shortly after the firsi Dutch seulement, The enclosed Company Garden can clearly be seen beside (he church, occupying a very prominent site in the town.

By the 1630S the commercial as well as teaching potential of the Leiden botanical garden was realised sufficiently for the French government to lake an interest in the establishment and support of the Jardin du RgUn Paris. The foundation of the Jardin du Roi 'and the extent of government commitme~t to it was to pro~,e a critical factor in the subsequent development of env~ronm~nta~ perce~tl~n~, parti~ula~'ly in view of the unprecedented opporrumry which It gave individual scientists not only [0 acquire a global biological knowledge but, through the connection with governmenr, to exercise their knowledge ~nd interp~etations of the dynamics or the natural world in political terms, In this connecnon, the foundation of rhe first colonial botanical gardens

.. -----J ~-..--~--.

The rncst noteworthy first step of chis kind was the foundation of the ~Company Garden' at Cape Town, (Kaap Stad) in [654.''' The botanical collections of the company gardens, drawing on a global iange of plants, some

6a For details of rhe history of the Cape botanical garden, see Karsten, TIl, OM Company's garde».

Portuguese and Dutch learn from South-West India

93

of them intended specifically for medical or commercial use, represented an accurate analogue of the current state of botanical knowledge and endeavour, one that was symbolic of the degree of economic or colonised control which was being acquired over the global environment. The exercise. or ,_<::,vlronmental control was already well developed in the Ne~,!1~laDds, and it was_no coincidence that the Dutch shQulalh_llv~ pioneered the colonial botanical garden. The implicit aim of acquiring a comprehensive and increasingly classified knowledge of the botanical world was ~'!.1p,araQJe to the cqnre!!lpprar_ interest in the acquisition of knowledge of the workings of the h\llm~n EDdy' as a whole sYstem.I'l In the VQC ervice, me'dical sw:geons were responsible for knowledge of both bodily and botanical systems. Such 'global' knowledge made particular sense in the context of an island. colony. Thu , as Du Quesne made clear in his account of the Mascarenes, the a~la.lo~! of I:h; island as '~_ whole world' had become increasingly attractive to Proresmnts." In France and in }:iu uenot e@iKr.e commun.iSi~§. inNcirwlsh- :indin tf;~-Cape Colony, the accumulation of detailed botanical knowledge by Huguenots became ~ inregra' part of the local intellectual cult~ S~ association; developed in the context of early Qyakeris".1" par~cularly in No_rf<:lk. At the same time as commercial development facilitated the assembling of plant species from all quarters of the world, the early scientific societies, especially in Britain and France, sought increasingly to systematise the collection of botanical and other knowledge, Thus the newly formed.,¥oJal Society went so far a to issue i~~~ for the use of travellers ill this respect as early as .! b6_6 and men again in 1704.1, 1 ts intervcn cion went some way to redress the rela ti ve lack of di rect ·iiitei=e'st in this respect byrhe English government.

In hindsight it can be seen that the acquisition of a global knowledge 0 plant and faunal occurrence and distribution constituted II first step towards an ability to determine the influence of man on tnC environment, particularly where his activities impinged on the existence or species whose rarity. and thus particular value, could only be assessed in the context of a reasonable degree of knowledge gleaned on a global basis. The accumulation in Europe of a global knowledge of plant and other life - and the active role played by institutions and governments in promoting such knowledge - was important. It coincided with the opening of a period when the ecological impact of European maritime and trading expansion firs! became apparent and com-

..." "-~>-r --- - .. ~

'LJorh Stephen Hales lind Frllnl'Ois Quesns)" (who were KC'y e.ighlccn!h-l:cmury figure. in the

development of plant physiology and ec:onomics. respectively) were much mteresied in the

circularion of the blood.

64 Du Que.n.:, A "CD' l!D.l'Ug( Iii Int Eus: lndirs, p. 23·

65 Marsh.aIl Send Williams, The lrral map of mankind" pp, 4~-7; J. Woodward, Bn'f mstrutuons

for rnali!i'ig ObJtnlQilOll' in all ptlm ~(Iit. lI,"r"'. " London. I b<,I6.

94

Green imperialism

men ted upon. It was in this context that the first well-developed awareness of ecological constraints came about with the DUTch colonisation of the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the presence of the botanical garden there, with an its paradisal antecedents, combined with emerging Dutch sensibilities about the value of indigenous and local medico-botanical knowledge [01 produce a response to environmental degradation which French and English colonists were only later Soble [0 emulate. The Dutch response was based, above all, on the capacity of local colonists to utilise a developing network of botanical knowledge based on the structures and active participation of the VOc. Such reinforcemenr WlIS not available at the time to English colonists on St Helena.

3

The English and Dutch East India companies and the seventeenthcentury emnronmental crisis in the colonies

At the core of the developing economic system in metropolitan Europe, envlronrnental anxieties were for a long time confined almost entirely to the prospect of a timber shortage - with the notable exception of me Venetian colonial state. By contrast, the situation al the colonial periphery, especially in the tropical island colonies, evoked a necessarily far wider range of landmanagement and eventually conservationist responses, Furthermore, the trOpical island had become a focus for understanding natural processes and a metaphor for handling new ideas about nature, 'new worlds' and social Utopias, In literature, the island was also serving as a vehicle for a discussion of issues about climate" disease and threats to health. Wi hin this overall cultural context, a comparison of the colonial environmental 'policies' of the English and Dutch East India companies shows that the different abilities to utilise botanical networks and to professionalise knowledge of nature led to very different environmental outcomes.

Fighting ecological decline: Local conservationism on St Helena, -.:66(}-l790

The small size of St Helena and the heavy reliance which the East India Company placed upon it as a supply base meant that environmental and health risks necessarily became [he special concern of the island's governors and

... ~ __ ;__.,:. .s ,"u .. . .. ,'-- .

dictably parndisal terms, the effects of new economic and ecological pressures soon gave rise to a much more critical and pejorative descriptive language.~ Helena was the first territory in which the English East India Company became acguaimed with the consequences Dr land degradation - long before such problems became apparent in India itself. As a result, Later responses made

95