Cover: Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, from Harvard University PressCover: Plants and Empire in PAPERBACK

Plants and Empire

Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World

Product Details

PAPERBACK

Print on Demand

$43.00 • £37.95 • €39.95

ISBN 9780674025684

Publication Date: 09/15/2007

Short

320 pages

5-3/4 x 9 inches

20 halftones

World

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Related Subjects

  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • “The Base for All Economics”
  • Plan of the Book
  • 1. Voyaging Out
    • Botanistes Voyageurs
    • Maria Sibylla Merian
    • Biopirates
    • Who Owns Nature?
    • Voyaging Botanical Assistants
    • Creole Naturalists and Long-Term Residents
    • Armchair Botanists
    • The Search for the Amazons
    • Heroic Narratives
  • 2. Bioprospecting
    • Drug Prospecting in the West Indies
    • Biocontact Zones
    • Secrets and Monopolies
    • Drug Prospecting at Home
    • Brokers of International Knowledge
  • 3. Exotic Abortifacients
    • Merian’s Peacock Flower
    • Abortion in Europe
    • Abortion in the West Indies: The Colonial Sexual Economy
    • Abortion and the Slave Trade
  • 4. The Fate of the Peacock Flower in Europe
    • Animal Testing
    • Self Experimentation
    • Human Subjects
    • Testing for Sexual Difference
    • The Complications of Race
    • Abortifacients
  • 5. Linguistic Imperialism
    • Empire and Naming the Kingdoms of Nature
    • Naming Conundrums
    • Exceptions: Quassia and Cinchona
    • Alternative Naming Practices
  • Conclusion: Agnotology
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

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