Early Contributors and Makers of Indian Herbaria: Networks, Specimens, and Legacies

Abstract

There are over eight thousand herbarium specimens of Indian plants gathered in the late seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. The majority are found today in the herbaria of the Natural History Museum, London (BM) and the University of Oxford (OXF). In this paper, we give an overview of the main collections of Indian plants from this period and of the individuals who contributed specimens to those collections. We consider where the plants were collected and the networks that facilitated the circulation of botanical specimens and knowledge between India and England during this period. We identify 26 different individuals responsible for contributing Indian specimens to fourteen different collections. Some individuals contributed many hundreds of specimens but others many fewer. Many of the contributors were medical practitioners employed as surgeons, typically aboard the ships or at the factories of the English East India Company (EIC). Other contributors were EIC merchants or officials, demonstrating the pivotal role played by the EIC in the development of knowledge of the Indian flora by Europeans. The significance of the EIC in shaping collecting during this period is also evident in the geography of the collections with most of the places recorded corresponding to EIC factories. Only two of the contributors identified were female. Moreover, all of the named collectors were Europeans. Nevertheless, Europeans had to negotiate with Indians to obtain specimens and knowledge, and evidence of such co-creation can be read from the names of plants in Indian languages, the details of uses that accompany specimens and, in one case, the explicit acknowledgment of an ‘Indian Druggist’ (i.e. an Indian medical practitioner). Collections made by Samuel Browne,
from sites in the interior of modern-day Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, also reflect his collaboration with Moghul rulers. We show that some of the individuals named on collections did not collect plants in India or assemble collections themselves but rather acted as ‘intermediaries’ in the circulation of Indian botanical specimens. We also demonstrate that most specimens represented in these collections date from 1690 to 1710 and were assembled by a small and closely connected group of individuals. Many of the specimens lack the provenance data we would expect of specimens made
today, but they nevertheless provide a unique resource for investigating environmental change and changes in the ways in which people have perceived, understood and engaged with plants over the last three centuries.