The East India Company and the natural world

317 Pages·2015·3.03 MB·English

by  Damodaran, Vinita

Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History
Editors:
Dr Vinita Damodaran, University of Sussex, UK
Dr Rohan D’Souza, Shiv Nadar University, India
Dr Sujit Sivasundaram, University of Cambridge, UK
Dr James Beattie, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Editorial Board Members:
Prof. Mark Elvin, ANU, Environmental historian of China
Prof. Heather Goodall, Sydney Institute of Technology, Environmental histo-
rian of Australia
Dr Edward Melillo, Amherst College, Environmental historian, USA
Dr Alan Mikhail, Yale, Environmental history of the Middle East
Prof. José Augusto Pádua, Federal University of Rio, Environmental historian
of Latin America
Dr Kate Showers, University of Sussex, Environmental historian of Africa
Prof. Graeme Wynn, University of British Columbia, Environmental historian,
Canada
Dr Robert Peckham, Hong Kong University, Environmental history/health his-
tory, world history, Hong Kong
The widespread perception of a global environmental crisis has stimulated the
burgeoning interest in environmental studies. This has encouraged a wide range
of scholars, including historians, to place the environment at the heart of their
analytical and conceptual explorations. As a result, the understanding of the
history of human interactions with all parts of the cultivated and non-cultivated
surface of the earth and with living organisms and other physical phenomena
is increasingly seen as an essential aspect both of historical scholarship and in
adjacent fields, such as the history of science, anthropology, geography and
sociology. Environmental history can be of considerable assistance in efforts
to comprehend the traumatic environmental difficulties facing us today, while
making us reconsider the bounds of possibility open to humans over time and
space in their interaction with different environments.
This series explores these interactions in studies that together touch on all parts
of the globe and all manner of environments including the built environment.
Books in the series will come from a wide range of fields of scholarship, from
the sciences, social sciences and humanities. The series particularly encourages
interdisciplinary projects that emphasize historical engagement with science and
other fields of study.
Titles in the Series include:
Simon Pooley
BURNING TABLE MOUNTAIN
An Environmental History of Fire on the Cape Peninsula
Vinita Damodaran, Anna Winterbottom & Alan Lester eds.
THE EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE NATURAL WORLD
Forthcoming Titles:
Richard Grove & George Adamson
EL NIÑO IN WORLD HISTORY, 3000 BCE – 2000 CE
Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History
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978–1–137–41538–7 (Paperback)
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The East India Company
and the Natural World
Edited by
Vinita Damodaran
Senior Lecturer and Director, Centre for World Environmental History,
University of Sussex, UK
Anna Winterbottom
Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Sussex, UK
and
Alan Lester
Professor of Historical Geography, University of Sussex, UK
Editorial matter and selection © Vinita Damodaran, Anna Winterbottom &
Alan Lester 2015
Remaining chapters © Respective authors 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-42726-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-49109-4 ISBN 978-1-137-42727-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137427274
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To Mark Elvin, a pioneering environmental historian
who has always been an inspiration
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
List of Tables xi
Preface xii
Anna Winterbottom
Notes on Contributors xvii
Introduction 1
New Imperial and Environmental Histories of the Indian Ocean
Alan Lester
1 Botanical Explorations and the East India Company:
Revisiting ‘Plant Colonialism’ 16
Deepak Kumar
2 Medicine and Botany in the Making of Madras, 1680–1720 35
Anna Winterbottom
3 Robert Wight and his European Botanical Collaborators 58
H. J. Noltie
4 The East India Company, Famine and Ecological
Conditions in Eighteenth-Century Bengal 80
Vinita Damodaran
5 Colonial Private Diaries and their Potential for
Reconstructing Historical Climate in Bombay, 1799–1828 102
George Adamson
6 Mischievous Rivers and Evil Shoals: The English East
India Company and the Colonial Resource Regime 128
Rohan D’Souza
7 The Raffl esia in the Natural and Imperial Imagination
of the East India Company in Southeast Asia 147
Timothy P. Barnard
8 ‘A proper set of views’: The British East India
Company and the Eighteenth-Century Visualization
of South-East Asia 167
Geoff Quilley
vii
viii Contents
9 Unlikely Partners: Malay-Indonesian Medicine
and European Plant Science 193
Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells
10 Plants, Animals and Environmental Transformation:
Indian–New Zealand Biological and Landscape
Connections, 1830s–1890s 219
James Beattie
11 St Helena as a Microcosm of the East India Company World 249
A. T. Grove
Afterword 270
Vinita Damodaran
Select Bibliography 272
Index 285
List of Illustrations
Cover: William Daniell, The Watering Place at Anjer Point ... Java,
© National Maritime Museum
2.1 © British Library Board; Icones Avium Maderaspatanarum
(BL ADD MS 5266) 39
3.1 Robert Wight and his European botanical collaborators
(drawn by Caroline Muir) 72
5.1 Semi-quantitative monsoon rainfall reconstruction for
Bombay from East India Company diaries, government
reports and contemporary newspapers. Continuous lines
represent instrumental observations from the Colaba
Observatory (1847–1859) and Bombay newspapers
(1817–1846). See Adamson and Nash (2014) 112
7.1 Rafflesia Arnoldii, in S. Raffles (1835) Memoir of the Life
and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffl es, Vol. 1
(London: James Duncan), p. 343 154
8.1 Arthur William Devis, Ara Kooger, 1783, black chalk on
paper, 231 × 183 mm. British Museum, Department of
Prints and Drawings, 1876,0708.2371 © Trustees of the
British Museum 174
8.2 William Hodges, engr. John Hall, Otoo King of O-Taheite,
1777, engraving, from James Cook, A voyage towards the
South Pole, and round the World: Performed in His Majesty’s
Ships the Resolution and Adventure, in the Years 1772, 1773,
1774, and 1775 (London, 1777), vol. 1, plate 38. British
Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Oc2006,
Prt.32 © Trustees of the British Museum 175
8.3 Arthur William Devis, Prince Lee Boo, 1783, black and
red chalk on paper, 264 × 194mm. British Museum,
Department of Prints and Drawings,1943,0409.1
© Trustees of the British Museum 176
8.4 William Hamilton, engr. James Caldwell, A Magindano
Marriage, 1779, etching and engraving, from Thomas
Forrest, A Voyage to New Guinea, and the Moluccas, from
ix