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Cultivating commerce : connoisseurship, botany and the plant trade in London and Paris, c. 1760 – c. 1815
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Easterby-Smith, Sarah (2009) Cultivating commerce : connoisseurship, botany and the plant trade in London and Paris, c. 1760 – c. 1815. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2338619~S15
Abstract
This dissertation situates eighteenth-century botany within the contexts of
contemporary commercial culture and international networks of knowledge
formation. I assess the connections between scholars, merchants and
consumers in London and Paris between c. 1760 and c. 1815. I ask how
individuals who made a commercial profit from selling science understood
and related to the notion of a community of scientific practitioners. My aim is
to expose the diversity of socio-intellectual configurations that existed in the
late eighteenth century.
I focus on the histories of two plant nurseries, one based in London
and the other in Paris. Their commercial successes rested on their proprietors’
abilities both to serve the growing consumer demand for plants and to actively
participate in the international scientific community. The first three chapters
address how each participated in scientific and commercial networks,
examining which groups composed these networks, the types of social
relationships they formed, and how knowledge circulated between them. I
highlight the role played by ‘gardener-botanists’ who acted as intermediaries
between each of these groups.
The final two chapters focus on the people who purchased and
exchanged plants. I assess who comprised the ‘public’ that collected
specimens and studied botany, and I examine how gardens in London and
Paris formed part of an expanding space for science. I emphasise in particular
the significance of the culture of connoisseurship to the history of botany, and
discuss the range of different publics who collected plants and studied their
science.
My research is concerned with the interplay between knowledge,
commerce and culture. Drawing from the notion that scientific knowledge is
always socially and culturally situated, I aim to connect the history of the
plant trade to the development of the science of botany, and to place these
within a wider cultural context.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HF Commerce Q Science > QK Botany |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Botany -- History -- 18th century, Nurseries (Horticulture) -- History -- 18th century, Commerce -- History -- 18th century, Botanists -- History -- 18th century, Native plant industry -- History -- 18th century | ||||
Official Date: | December 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of History | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Berg, Maxine, 1950- ; Jones, Colin, 1947- | ||||
Sponsors: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) | ||||
Extent: | 2 v. (xii, 475 leaves) : ill., maps. | ||||
Language: | eng |
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