石榴视频

Join us for this seminar by Scott Backrath from the University of Manchester.

Please meet at 5 pm for a 5.30 pm start.

Presentation Abstract

The theft of botanical materials and knowledge from Indigenous Peoples in the early modern period is a relatively understudied area of history. This presentation provides an in-depth discussion of two examples where the British Empire committed, or attempted to commit, biopiracy. Research presented here features in Scott Backrath's doctoral thesis: 'Global Biopiracy in the Age of Empire: Indigeneity, Decolonisation, and the Politics of Botanical Knowledge in the British World, c.1600-1800'.

The kidnapping of Tuki and Huru (M膩ori), orchestrated by English colonists in Norfolk Island in 1793, to gain M膩ori knowledge of Harakeke processing is the first example of biopiracy discussed. The second case examines the looting of nutmeg from the Banda Islands (in present day Maluku Islands) by the British post-conquest in 1796, arguing that this was biopiracy poorly masked as collecting. Classifying these acts as biopiracy in our research complicates the current definition of this concept to accommodate the early-modern context, and includes the theft of people, plants and knowledge as well as the improper accreditation of Indigenous botanical knowledge.

Classifying these cases as biopiracy fosters the foregrounding of Indigenous perspectives, agency, and culture in exploring the history of botany. An interdisciplinary approach is adopted consisting of Critical Indigenous Studies, Environmental Humanities, the History of Science in a Global Perspective and Decolonial Museum Studies. This approach enables a wider discussion of how early-modern European scientific practices were entangled with the exploitation of the natural world in ways that had disruptive, severe consequences for Indigenous Peoples. For example, Eighteenth-century British botanical illustrations of harakeke disrupted M膩ori understandings regarding the plant through depicting it as dismembered and abstracted, undermining the idea of wh膩nau (family) it represents. The same abstraction present in an illustration of nutmeg, coupled with Linnaean taxonomy, obfuscates Bandanese history and the colonial violence that surrounds this plant.