Macleay’s Choice: Transacting the Natural History Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Ville, Simon; Wright, Claire; Philp, Jude

doi:10.1007/s10739-020-09610-9

Cited by 34 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…1841, 3. 18 Ville, Wright, andPhilp 2020. 1. Underground Evolution -Setting the Stage heroically churned out on hand presses by sharp compositors.…”

Section: New Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reign of the Beast

Desmond

2024

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In the 1830s, decades before Darwin published the Origin of Species, a museum of evolution flourished in London. Reign of the Beast pieces together the extraordinary story of this lost working-man's institution and its enigmatic owner, the wine merchant W. D. Saull. A financial backer of the anti-clerical Richard Carlile, the ‘Devil's Chaplain’ Robert Taylor, and socialist Robert Owen, Saull outraged polite society by putting humanity’s ape ancestry on display. He weaponized his museum fossils and empowered artisans with a knowledge of deep geological time that undermined the Creationist base of the Anglican state. His geology museum, called the biggest in Britain, housed over 20,000 fossils, including famous dinosaurs. Saull was indicted for blasphemy and reviled during his lifetime. After his death in 1855, his museum was demolished and he was expunged from the collective memory. Now multi-award-winning author Adrian Desmond undertakes a thorough reading of Home Office spy reports and subversive street prints to re-establish Saull's pivotal place at the intersection of the history of geology, atheism, socialism, and working-class radicalism.

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“…1841, 3. 18 Ville, Wright, andPhilp 2020. 1. Underground Evolution -Setting the Stage heroically churned out on hand presses by sharp compositors.…”

Section: New Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reign of the Beast

Desmond

2024

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“…More recently, historical reconstructions and analyses of the global trade in natural history specimens during the 19th century are enriching understandings of museum collections (e.g., Ville et al., 2020). These studies recognise a vital need to broaden history of science to include consideration of the environmental conditions in which newly introduced organisms lived, whether in the laboratory, the garden, the field, the atmosphere or the body.…”

Section: Broadening Histories Of Knowledge Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, we argue that it is impossible to examine aspects of hybridization or genetics in a botanical garden, without considering either the networks of trade, commerce and culture which encouraged such experimentation or the potential ecological impacts of hybridized plants as weeds in a new environment (e.g., King, 2020;Minard, 2019). More recently, historical reconstructions and analyses of the global trade in natural history specimens during the 19th century are enriching understandings of museum collections (e.g., Ville et al, 2020). These studies recognise a vital need to broaden history of science to include consideration of the environmental conditions in which newly introduced organisms lived, whether in the laboratory, the garden, the field, the atmosphere or the body.…”

Section: Theoretical Engagementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From history of science to history of knowledge? Themes and perspectives in colonial Australasia

Beattie

Morgan

2021

History Compass

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This overview article presents some of the main approaches to histories of colonial science in Australasia as well as suggesting future areas of research. Given the plurality of knowledge systems in the colonial period, we argue that a framework defined by history of knowledge, rather than history of science, better reflects the realities of colonial Australasia and opens up opportunities for fresh and innovative scholarship. A 'history of knowledge systems' approach, we contend, has the potential to free the study of non-Western knowledge systems from normative approaches that define other systems only in relation to Western science. A history of knowledge approach, we believe, enables scholars to explore the complex ways in which knowledge-making in colonial Australasia arose from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous traditions, perspectives and practices. | INTRODUCTIONOn his return to Scotland in 1862, physician and botanist William Lauder Lindsay (1829-1880) reflected on his recent tour of New Zealand. In the 1862 pamphlet Place and Power of Natural History in Colonisation, he observed that 'the systematic, economical, and complete development of … [Otago's] resources can be effectually accomplished only by the aid of scientific observations and deductions'. Such views typified his generation's approach to science in Australasia as being primarily concerned with utilitarian matters of practical use to colonial development.For historians of science too, Lindsay's outlook reflects the predominant focus of the field in Australasia on 'science in the service of empire' during the long 19th century (e.g., Gascoigne, 1998).In this short review article, we map such approaches to the history of science in Australasia, and make a case for new directions in the field. Provocatively, we argue that rather than the frameworks traditionally offered by the history of science, the application of a history of knowledge lens would better serve historians seeking to make sense of the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples interpreted and understood the natural and

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“…13 This work has subsequently been advanced by scholars investigating how different agents, such as field collectors, public institutions, commercial businesses and private collectors, made choices about the various pathways specimens might circulate within the natural history trade. 14 Despite these advances, a serious and ongoing gap in current scholarship involves the relationships that Indigenous people and societies had to networks of imperial science, as well as Indigenous responses to natural history projects. 15 Critical Indigenous Studies approaches to eighteenth-and nineteenth-century scientific networks have, to date, mainly focused on geologic and geographic scientific expeditions and their ethnographic undercurrents.…”

Section: Archival Bias and Indigenous Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Global Commodity Chains and Local Use-Value: William Colenso, natural history collecting and Indigenous labour

Kuster¹

2021

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

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On 20 January 1842, the joint botanical-missionary expedition led by Church Missionary Society printer William Colenso (1811-99) was making its way on foot from the hill of Te Wairere to the pa of Tapiri, through the interior of New Zealand's North Island. The travelling party was still regrouping following a poor night's sleep.The day before, two local guides had deserted the expedition, leaving behind some of the gear in a forest after deciding to return to Mokomokorea. Without access to camp bedding, the remaining travellers had been obliged to endure an uncomfortable, rainy night in the company of innumerable mosquitoes. In this final leg of what had been a strenuous three-month journey, the last stages were proving to be the most arduous. It is at this point in his "bush notes" that Colenso records detailed impressions of Abraham, an Indigenous man who had been travelling with the expedition and helping to deliver sermons since it set out from Paihia in November. Noting Abraham's skills as a negotiator and navigator, alongside his judgements of Abraham's life-story, Colenso wrote: "In passing over the road Abm. shewed me the spot where when a Child he was seized… by the Ngapuhi Tribe…. The present was the first time of his passing the spot since his capture." 1 This episode, a strikingly vivid and personal account of an Indigenous life-story,

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Macleay’s Choice: Transacting the Natural History Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Cited by 34 publications

References 58 publications

Reign of the Beast

Reign of the Beast

From history of science to history of knowledge? Themes and perspectives in colonial Australasia

Global Commodity Chains and Local Use-Value: William Colenso, natural history collecting and Indigenous labour

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