William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

William Roxburgh

The Scottsh Enlightenment had a profound impact on India and historians have failed to study the impact of the intellectual movement that emerged as a consequence of the Act of Union, 1707. I have been studying a number of Scots who worked in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Mark Wilks, Colin Mackenzie, and am now beginning a more detailed study of William Roxburgh. My work on Col Mark Wilks has been cited in the latest English Historical Review and have worked earlier on Colin Mackenzie, the first Surveyor General of India. I now hope to write a longer work on the Scottish Nation in India and its contribution to the understanding of India, it History, Literature and the Natural World. Obviously an Intllectual History of the sort we propose sits uncomfortably with the modern notions of post colonial study which negates the very idea that the past is accessible to human knowledge and is open to truthful and rational investigation. With these words let me move on to the study of William Roxburgh.

Government House Madras, Chennai

Perhaps the most honoured botanist of his day and was second only to Sir Joseph Banks. William Roxburgh was educated at the University of Edinburgh which was the instirutional centre of the Scottish Enlightenment' Born in 1751 Roxburgh died in 1815 and came from a family that had close ties with Henry Dundas who was the Chairman of the Board of Control of the East India Company and an influential politician in Georgian England. roxburgh stdied under John Hope who initiated the young William into the world of botanical study. Botany was still in its infancy, though the Royal Gardens of Kensington and Kew had been established it was under Sir Joseph Banks that these botanical gardens became centers of an ever widening web of botanical exchange, ropagation of plants and collection of seeds for further reseach and study. Indeed the very establishment of the Botanical Garden at Kew was itself a Scottish foundation as it owed its origin to John Stuart, the Earl of Bute in the 1760s. With the intervention of hs patrons in the Company establihsment, William Roxburgh got a position as Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Headquarters of the East India Company. Arriving in Madras after rounding the Cape of Good Hope in May 1776. The job of the Assistant Surgeo seems to have been extremely light as roxburgh found the time to indulge his passion for collecting botanical specimens.

Botanical nvestigation was rather chaotic in the early eighteenth century, a situation that was destined to change due to the theoretical and empirical work of the great Swedish naturalist Charles Linnaeus. The plants were studied on the bais of their external charecteristics rather than the inherent sexual and reproductive functions which were performed in numerous ways by plants. Linneaus introduced the taxonomic method by which the charecteristic features of plants were studied according to its Taxonomic feature, generic features and thereby the species was identified. The morphology of plants and their parts were studied in a scientific manner and Herberia were manitained for ready reference.

In Madras now renamed Chennai, Roxburgh mt Dr Koenig a pupil of Dr Charles Linneaus. Koenig was associated with the Danish settlemnt of Tranquebar, a notorious slaving station on the coromandel coast run by the Dutch East India Company and of course Protestant missionaries like Ziegenbang did not find anything offensive ethically or morally in the odious trae of indegenous people as slaves. Both Roxburgh and Koenig went of Plant collection expeditions all over the Coromandel region collecting specimens. The East India Company was particularly interested i economically beneficial plants like Teak, Indigo and of course Spices. We do not know what happened to this early collection. When Koenig died he left his papes to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society. In 1781 Roxburgh was transferred to Samalkota, near the estuary of the River Godavari and the wild life reserve Forest of Coringa and it was here that a mounumental tragedy struck.

( to be continued in Part II)

From Hortus Malabaricus to Flora Indica: William Roxburgh and Botany

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Horti Malbarici

"A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible", is a well known Welsh proverb. The worlf of Plants and their place in the Natural World has seized the imagination of Poets, Philosophers and Scientists. And in the eighteenth century with the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment, the search for botanical specimens and their exploitation for economic or medical purposes became a vital ingriedient of the global network of botanical gardens with Kew Garden at the top of the chain and spreading right round the world to places as far distant as St. Helena, Cape Town, Calcutta, Singapore and Penang. Sometimes called Company Gardens these botanical spaces collected stored and transmitted palnt specimens from across the lobe. Till tis day Kew Garden holds the world's largest seed bank and contains Plant Plasma from almost all known species. Eminent botanists like Sir Joseph Banks the Patron of the famous William Roxburgh ( 1751-1815) were associated with and worked for the Collections now located in Kew and Kensington Gardens. The exchange of seeds and botanical specimens rom the tropical world to the Americas is a story that needs to be revisited as the prticipation of "natives" in this process is largely ignored and white scientists are given almost a divine stature in existing literature.

The expnsion of the European world into parts of Asia and Africa was the first step that enabled the systematic transfer of Asian botanical knowledge acquired over centuries of reflection to networks of knowledge exchange that sprung up all along the maritime routes linking Asia to Europe. India was the first Asian Civilization ro be plundered of its traditional knowledge and once plundered rendered illlegitimate in the eyes of the newwly triumphant West. A good example is the creation and publication of the Hortus Malbaricus whose title page is illustrated.

The Dutch East India Company or the VOC was in Asia even before Queen Elizabeth I granted the Charter to Gentlemen Traders on the last day of December 1600. The VOC comanded the Cape of Good Hope and had a significant presence in Java with Batavia as the centre of an ever expanding web of exchange involving Plants, Slaves and Missionaries. The Spice Islands which produced the spices of the world which were in great demand like Nutmeg, Cinnamon,Pepper and Cloves. And to facilitate the cultivation of such spices and economically useful plants it was necessary to appropriate local knowledge and with Kochi falling into the hands of the Dutch the path was opened for systematic exploitation of indigenous knowledge. The Portuguese had already started the process in Goa but their addicion to religious propaganda and the Inquisition left them with little time to pursue more academic ends'

The Governor of the Dutch territory along the Mlabar with Cochin now Kochi as the capital was Hendrik van Rheede who conceived of the idea of assembling the entire botanical kingdom of the Western Ghats into a lage compendium which would enhance the Materia Medica available to the western world. The capture of local medicinal knowledge was vital as the soldiers from Europe were following seriously ill with tropical diseases for which the dark skinned native seemed to have the cure with herbs plant extracts and the like. Over a period of 30 yeas the Flora of the Western Ghats was collected illustrated and published in Netherlands. It may be added that Hortus Malabaricus which has been translated into English by Dr Manilal, a botanist and Historian from Kerala. The 12 volumes with rich illustrations was one of the most expensive publications of the time and only 6 complete copies of this great work are known to exist and none in India.

Th extract local knowledge and its  medical uses it was necessary to involve local bearers of knowledge: Ranga Bhatt, Vinayaka Bhatt and Appu Bhatt along with a vaidhya of the Ezhava Community Itty Achutan were the ones who collected the specimens and gave the names in malayalam language. Here again we find that the exchange of knowledge was facilitated by men who were willing to collaborate. From Malayalam the name were translated into Portuguese and then a Latin trnaslation was made. The myriad linguistic registers involved and the expense of makinf the Copper engravings of the Plants as illustrations and the publication of the huge volumes all show how valuable the local  knowledge was. If Intllectual Property is claimed over this knowlefge the entire Pharmacuetical Industry of Europe and  America will collapse.

The 12 volumes desribed in detail 742 plants and since the taxa of Charles Linneaus was still a century away, the classification was made using local principles. Unfortunately the herbarium records of this Project were lost and the plants in this splendid volume can be identified only up to the generic level. The morphology of plants was not understood when Hortus was completed. The creation of this spectacular work itself stimulated botanical collections in India and other parts of the world'

                                            (to be continued in Part II)