Science, to Understand the Abundance of Plants and Trees

In the 1830s, a natural history museum and herbarium was founded in Istanbul, within the Ottoman Imperial Medical College complex in Galata Sarayı. The few accounts (mostly by botanists) written on the history of the establishment and management of the herbarium and museum consider its history in the context of the colonial ambitions of European actors and employ the concept of “westernization,” implying the asymmetrical influence of European technology, values and knowledge over the Ottoman realm, leading to the imitation and copying of European ways of imperial administration. This chapter, by contrast, argues that the first herbarium and natural history museum within Ottoman territories functioned as a hub where doctors, scientists, plant collectors and bureaucrats from the Ottoman Empire and from different parts of Europe (including Russia) formed an inter-imperial network to pursue scientific, but also political and economic interests. It emphasizes that relations in the network were characterized by conflict, cooperation and negotiation between different human and non-human actors. Relationships were dialectic rather than shaped by the asymmetries of westernization.

The Transformation of an Ecological Policy

This chapter analyzes the scandalization of agricultural experiments with Cuban tobacco seeds in mid-nineteenth century France. It shows how engineers of the French state tobacco monopoly, which was established in the Napoleonic era, tried to become independent from Cuban cigar exports by introducing a substitution program that relied heavily on acclimatization experiments. However, these trials stimulated lively discussions in France and finally caused a scandal that temporarily destabilized the Parisian officials. The chapter integrates perspectives of global and imperial history with a closer view on the emerging public sphere in France and locates the scandalization of acclimatization experiments in the broader context of a changing imperial world.

French Mandate Syria and Lebanon

This chapter examines the French mandate state in Syria and Lebanon’s organization of agricultural activity and ecological intervention. It argues that the introduction of the mandate state resulted in an intensification of ecological transfer and experimentation. Institutions with a longer-term engagement in the region saw a shift in their activity as they were increasingly overseen by the state-building requirements of the mandatory authorities. While ecological exchanges had previously occurred, both in traditional and in imperial settings, the introduction of the nation state increased their directedness and capabilities. An international, interimperial, bureaucracy was at the service of the requirements identified by the mandate authorities. French agricultural societies and capitalist lobbyists, administrative practices inherited from previous French and other colonial experiences, scientific practices as advocated by learned groups, local people’s aspirations for prosperity as demonstrated in the Syro-Lebanese public sphere and ecological actors being transferred with mixed success to the locale in the name of a “national” economy.

Animal Skinners

The chapter examines the transcolonial networks of a Swiss zoologist, Johann Büttikofer. He was employed by the Royal Museum of Natural History in Leiden. Together with the Swiss hunter, Franz Xaver Stampfli, he participated in two zoological expeditions to Liberia in the 1870s and 1880s. The chapter analyzes the various forms and cultures of human-animal relations that developed in the West African contact zone during the expeditions when different social classes, ethnic groups and species met and interacted. The chapter argues that these exchanges in the contact zone shaped the research agendas in the scientific metropoles in Europe to a considerable degree.

Introduction

The introduction outlines the concept of the volume. It briefly sketches the state of research, it defines the key issues and it outlines the structures, dimensions and outreaches of the networks dealt with in the book. It reflects upon informal aspects of the networks, such as correspondences and exchanges between those scientists who played important parts in the global ecological networks and feature in many of the following chapters. It also refers to the institutional infrastructures which shaped the networks and are examined in the individual chapters, such as acclimatization societies, forest administrations, botanical and zoological gardens, natural history museums, agricultural colleges and colonial research stations. Following the results of actor-network-theory, the introduction defines three categories of agents of ecological change: firstly, European scientists and colonists, secondly, non-European actors, and thirdly, non-human agents of transfer, such as animals and plants. Furthermore, the introduction addresses the temporal dimensions of the networks. It problematizes their chronological organization and the role of different forms of temporality.

Inventing Colonial Agronomy

After European colonizers had appropriated the so-called “new territories” in Africa in the 1880s, their main concern was to turn them into profitable agricultural estates. This chapter examines the contribution of the Buitenzorg botanical gardens in Dutch Java to the making of the colonial plantation economy in Africa and Asia. It argues that, by 1900, Buitenzorg had become the single-most cherished model for agronomic engineering in the “new territories” and beyond. In Buitenzorg, international experts had established several research laboratories that excelled in crop genetics. They increased the yield of cocoa, tobacco, coffee or coutchouc plants and made them resistant against pests. In doing so, Buitenzorg emancipated botany from its descriptive origins and transformed it into an applied science of agronomy that served the purposes of colonial governments. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Buitenzorg was an important global hub of cash crop exchange and controlled most transfers of modern techniques to foster colonial development.

Securing Resources for the Industries of Wilhelmine Germany

The chapter deals with the making of a plantation economy in the German colonies in West Africa, 1884-1914. It focuses on the contributions of German botanists like, for example, Walter Busse, and examines the transimperial networks of scientific exchange they were involved in. Furthermore, the chapter deals with the unintended consequences of the cultivation of “cash crops” like cotton and rubber in German Togo and Cameroon. It analyzes how the German scientists established the discipline of phytopathology to fight the germs, bacteria and insects that damaged the plants important for colonial agriculture.

Adapting to Change in Australian Estuaries

In the 1880s, Eastern Australian estuaries supported thriving oyster industries. They supplied lime for building early in Australia’s development, but as cities and towns grew, it was the briny salty taste for this delicacy that saw the growth of the sector. When the oyster beds at the east coast of Australia became depleted, fishermen looked to New Zealand, where the same Oyster species grew, to supply cultivation stock for the Australian market. It was presumed that transfers would have the same impact as those already being moved within the Australian ecological networks. That is: it would present no problem at all. What was overlooked in this intercolonial exchange was the presence of the mudworm in the New Zealand estuaries. Mudworm co-habitats with oysters without killing them, but impedes the healthy development of the oysters making them inedible. This chapter places the mudworm at the center of a new narrative in the ecological networks of oysters. Rather than articulating the mudworm as a damaging invasive species, it argues that the mudworm was an agent of change that caused the fishermen to adjust their methods of oyster cultivation.

Brumbies (Equus ferus caballus) as Colonizers of the Esperance Mallee–Recherche Bioregion in Western Australia

Before Australia was taken over by humans more than 55 000 years BP, the landscapes were shaped through animal agency. Extinct prehistoric fauna and megafauna had social ecological systems and actively organized ecosystems and landscapes that reflected patterns of herbivory, soil foraging, nutrient cycling and predation. Surviving species continued as agents in the ecosystem functions of the EM-R region until the beginning of European colonization in the 1860’s. The settlers used the inherent biological traits of their domesticated animals, including horses, as an agency of colonization. Horses (Equus ferus caballus) who escaped to become wild are known as Brumbies in the Australian vernacular. They adapted to the local environments and prospered. This chapter analyzes the ways Brumbies have adapted to and made the land their own. It shows how they became intimately engaged with landscape details and resources which are reflected through their creation of cultural horsetrails as they moved purposefully throughout their homelands.

Epilogue

The epilogue re-assesses Alfred Crosby’s thesis of “ecological imperialism” in the light of new scientific and historical findings in order to establish a coherent understanding of global ecological and biological change during the past 500 years. It draws on concepts from evolutionary theory and ecology—including “niche construction,” “propogule pressure,” “vector,” and “invasion”—to argue that perhaps Crosby’s most important point, that Europeans established themselves best in environments where they could grow and use familiar crops and animals, is still correct. The epilogue argues for closer interdisciplinary cooperation of the historical and ecological sciences to explain the biological and ecological reordering of the world in the context of globalization.