Overview

In March 1807, Nathaniel Wallich, a young Danish surgeon left his home in Copenhagen towards India. During the troubles of the Napoleonic Wars, it was not possible to foresee, that he was to emerge as one of the most prominent nineteenth century botanists. Wallich spent most of his adulthood in India and, as the long-time superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, gained extensive expertise on Indian flora. A truly global communication network emerged from his desk facing the River Hooghly, reaching out to eminent specialists as well as amateur researchers long forgotten today. He conducted research trips to Nepal, as well as to South East Asia and may be perceived as one of the founding fathers of tea production in Assam. This book is based on the enormous correspondence of Wallich, preserved in libraries across Calcutta, London, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Munich and many other places. It aims to approach a long career marked by biographical ruptures and contradictions, but at the same time by continuity. It furthermore explains the tight links between supposedly neutral botanical studies and the emergence of British colonial power in India.

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9781032377117

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Martin Krieger serves as a professor for Northern European History at the University of Kiel, Germany. His major fields of research are intellectual and cultural history and the history of science. He has extensively published on the history of the Baltic Sea region, on global intellectual networks and global consumer goods, such as on tea and coffee. He has published European Cemeteries in South India: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (Manohar 2013).

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