Flowerbeds and hothouses: botany, gardens, and the tcirculation of knowledge in Things

The development and management of planted spaces in Northwestern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries depended on the possibilities for circulation in the republic of letters of the Dutch golden age. Circulation was accompanied by questions of managing space, information and "epistemic things" (Rheinberger) for botanists. Against the conceptual backdrop of "circulation" (Raj), "circulatory regimes" (Saunier) and "ensembles of things" (Hahn), this paper analyses, first, flowerbeds as a script for managing information that shaped botanical gardens across Europe in Leiden, Uppsala, Coimbra, and as far as Batavia according to Linnaean principles. Second, it investigates hothouses as spaces for managing things, and with it the role of knowledge in things handled by professional and amateur gardeners, not least the stove for pineapple cultivation. The paper concludes with reflections on the community of the material and the social around epistemic things, and the differing influences of description and narration in garden spaces." (author's abstract

Beyond the merchant and the clergyman: assessing moral claims about development cooperation

This article proposes to move beyond the categories of altruism and self-interest in the analyses of the motives for development cooperation. This opposition ignores the inherently moral nature of development policy. The article illustrates the shortcomings of such a perspective by tracing the metaphor of the merchant and the clergyman as archetypical figures shaping Dutch development policy. Through these images the suggestion of an opposition between moral and amoral motives in the history of development has gained a strong foothold within the interplay of scholars, policy makers and public opinion. We go on to assess claims about economy, security, solidarity, prestige and guilt, and ecology, which have been brought forward to legitimise Dutch foreign aid. This analysis calls for research on the dynamics of the transnational exchanges of ideas, interests and expectations, especially during episodes when the moral validity of policy has been explicitly contested

The Market Place today: From Botanical Water to Natural Capital

Sometimes research and fashion crisscross each other in interesting ways. Last summer it was obvious when looking at the windows of high-end department stores in Switzerland and Austria that the objects of the 18th century collector were absolutely en vogue. The trend trickled down to widely circulated interior magazines, and curiosities became popular at German and Belgian flea markets. From mounted animals to midcentury plant illustrations to Scottish gin named "the Botanist" - why that int..

„Rumphius“ als kulturelles Erbe

Esther Helena Arens Sowohl der Forscher Rumphius als auch seine Texte sind innerhalb der Institutionen kanonisiert, die das kulturelle Erbe der Niederlande bewahren, definieren und ausstellen. Im Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam ist es der Naturforscher, der nach dem porträtierenden Kupferstich aus der ersten Ausgabe der Amboinsche Rariteitkamer von 1705 inszeniert wird und die Bedeutung der Naturwissenschaften für das niederländische Kolonialregime im heutigen Indonesien personifiziert. Auch in der..

Geschichte bewegt: Kanon und Kollektive

von Esther Helena Arens Seitdem in den Niederlanden der 2000er Jahre der Kanon als Bildungsinstrument diskutiert und inhaltlich wie pädagogisch überarbeitet worden ist, steht neben der Auswahl auf Literaturgeschiedenis.nl auch der historische Canon van Nederland für das Lernen im Schulunterricht zur Verfügung. Auf den beiden Webseiten ist die niederländisch-deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert mit Einträgen zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, Besatzung und Judenverfolgung vertreten. Bildschirmfoto der ..

Leaves and Language

Working as a merchant-naturalist on the Moluccan islands in the late 17th century, and collecting information for the VOC in the Netherlands, G.E. Rumpf continually reflected upon the transportation of botanical knowledge from Asia to Europe and therefore about the transformation from plant to paper. This transformation could be quite literal. For example he described in The Ambonese Herbal how dried banana leaves that had been smoothened with a certain type of shell could be used as paper. I..

Botanical Letters

Starting from G. Rumphius' Het Amboinsche Kruid-Boek, written on Ambon in the late 1600s and published in Amsterdam from 1741 onwards - how to research historical plants, analyze botanical material culture, and write about the coloniality of a botanical regime? Ausgehend von G. Rumphius' Het Amboinsche Kruid-Boek (Amsterdam 1741 ff.), befasst sich das Blog mit Fragen der Wissensgeschichte von Pflanzen allgemein, mit der von tropischen Pflanzen ausgehenden materiellen Kultur, und mit der Verfl..

Lontar: From Palm Leaf to Manuscript

Two weeks ago, in the small reading room for manuscripts from the special collections at Leiden University, a researcher explored scripture on narrow long brown leaves. Both these leaves from a palm tree (Palmyra, Borassus flabellifer) and the manuscript they constitute go by the name of lontar. The technique was characteristic of the literary cultures on Java and Bali especially: "[...] the library in the sense of a collection of authoritative written texts cared for and consulted by special..

Burman the Botanist, Digitisation, and Circulation

In the 1730s, in Amsterdam, the desk of Jan Burman was one of the busier nodal points in the network of botanists stretching out from the Netherlands along the routes of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and across Europe. A practising physician and a botanist with the latinised name Joannes Burmannus, he worked on his own Thesaurus Zeylanicus (Amsterdam 1737) while maintaining correspondences for example with Carolus Linnaeus. In the course of the decade, he managed to get access to the man..