Table of Contents

1. 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.

Promotional Information

Richly illustrated 1996 collection on how Pacific plants and peoples were depicted by European explorers.