Ecologies of the Atlantic Archipelago

Abstract

In the archives of the Yale Center for British Art there is an album of pressed plant, flower, and seaweed specimens. This material artefactassembled by an unknown collectorfeatures plates from across the Atlantic archipelago, or what Andrew McNeillie has described as the "unnameable constellation of islands on the Eastern Atlantic coast" (2007, vii). Preserved between 1856 and 1863, Welsh seaweeds from Aberystwyth, and ivy from Glasplant and Llechryd (Figure 1) are carefully placed within the same scrapbook as specimens from the Bog of Allen (Figure 2), Carrickfergus, the Isle of Wight, Sussex (Figure 3), and Somerset. Confounding taxonomical distinctions, the plants and flowers are sometimes arranged aesthetically, rather than according to genus and species. While the anonymity of this particular collector adds to the emphasis on the non-human, the collector of another such album of botanical specimens highlights women's engagement with natural history and knowledge production across these islands. Madeleine Mathiss's album, for example, contains 30 specimens of seaweed and includes samples collected on the south coast of England (Torquay, Brighton, and Southend) and on the northern coast of Ireland (Glenarm, Co. Antrim). Through travel across the islands and regions of the archipelago, these collectors sought to group the flora of the countries together as an interconnected and mutually-enhancing whole. Linking the biota of the archipelago in single albums, they are alert to distinguishing features and environments, offering points of similarity and contrast. Such albums demonstrate an archipelagic awareness not only to the study of the natural world and natural history, but also of travel routes, knowledge production, imaginative association, and the relationship between human and non-human worlds in the nineteenth century. They embody both the material reality of an archipelagic archive as well as demonstrate an archipelagic methodology.Studies of the intertwined histories of what historian J.G.A. Pocock coined "the Atlantic Archipelago" (1974, 8) have given rise to the critical field of archipelagic studies. As in John Kerrigan's seminal work, Archipelagic English (2008), the cover of which shows the familiar image of Great Britain and Ireland on a map tilted, reaching out from mainland Europe and into the Atlantic, this involves a new and historically grounded perspective on geography, identity, and the relations between nations and islands. Kerrigan's study of seventeenth-century "English literature" delves deep into the ways in which these islands constituted "interactive entities" (2008, vii).