Placing Joseph Banks in the North Pacific

The South Pacific was a fulcrum of Joseph Banks's maritime world and global networks. The North Pacific was a distance and intangible fringe. This article is concerned with how Banks should be ‘placed’ in the North Pacific. It tracks how Banks's activities have been delineated in terms of languages and categories of global and local, and centre and margin, and then considers the historical and geographical specifics apposite to his connection to the North Pacific. In this setting, ideas of place (as location and assignment) and capital (as a circulatory and everyday practice of exchange and opportunism) come into view and question the distinction between science and commerce in Banks historiography. The article considers a diverse group of non-Indigenous figures – explorers, traders, cartographers, scientists, collectors – operating in the North Pacific in the 1780s and 1790s whose initiatives and missives passed across Banks's desk, and assesses their place in Banks's archive by drawing on Peter Sloterdijk's ideas about the interiorising and exteriorising logic of capital.PostprintPeer reviewe

Archibald Menzies, London, to Sir James Edward Smith, Norwich, [Norfolk]

Received letter from [Georg Heinrich] Noehden proposing Dr [Christian Fridericus] Schwaegrichen [(1775-1853)] as FMLS; forwards nomination certificate for Smith to sign and suggests also forwarding it to [Dawson] Turner. [Smith has annotated on recto of folio]: "sent certificate to Mr D Turner, Dec. 30 1822"

Archibald Menzies, 6 Chapel Place, [London], to James Edward Smith, Norwich, [Norfolk]

Thanks for copy of Smith's "Introduction to Botany". Comments on error on page 263 regarding a 'Liliaceous' plant found by him on north-west coast of America, encloses note [extant] written by [Richard] Salisbury in margin of Sir Joseph Banks' copy of book stating same, offers to send the drawings and descriptions for Smith to reexamine

Archibald Menzies, London, to Sir James Edward Smith

Asks Smith to compose an epitath for [James] Dickson

Archibald Menzies, London, to Sir James Edward Smith, Norwich, Norfolk

Investigated vacant Edinburgh botany professorship at Smith's request: the government made its first offer to [Robert] Brown on 18 December [1819], three days after the death of the late professor [Daniel Rutherford]; Brown refused the post and it was given to Dr [Robert] Graham [(1786-1845)]. Satisfaction he and "every well-wisher to the science" would have had if Smith had been appointed; believes it is worth £1000-1200 a year. Glasgow professorship still vacant but not as valuable. Will endeavour to procure Smith's late servant a position

Archibald Menzies, 6 Chapel Place, Cavendish Square, [London], to James Edward Smith, Norwich, [Norfolk]

Responds to Smith's three letters of: 6 August 1804, thanks for rare cryptogamic plants and news of Miss Smith's marriage to Mr Martin; 17 December 1804, gave [James] Sowerby 'Boronia alata', 'B. crenulata', and 'B. denticulata', also recommended Sir Joseph Banks' specimens; 5 January [1805], thanks for turkey and hare from [William Fitt] Drake, Smith's old appartments ready for when he comes to town

Archibald Menzies, London, to Sir James Edward Smith

Thanks for turkey and parcel of Nepal mosses. Deaths of [Erik] Acharius, [Christiaan] Persoon, and [Daniel Rutherford], professor of botany at Edinburgh; understands it is a government appointment and already filled, though it would suit Smith

Archibald Menzies, London, to Sir James Edward Smith

Thanks for turkey. Looked into the loss of Smith's letters, they may be in a parcel left at [Dawson] Turner's. Dulness of London