Botanical gardens established in European colonies in the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa were conceived from the outset as instruments of colonial domination. Projecting an image of tropical nature brought under control, they became part of a global economy through nurseries selling plants, the use of virtually free labor, the cultivation of the most profitable species for the colonial power, and the importation of new products (tea, coffee, cocoa, spices, gum, cinchona…).
From the late 18th century to the 1930s, how did these gardens, alongside other colonial institutions, contribute to the exploitation of natural resources? How were they managed on a day-to-day basis? How did they promote a vision of nature as both controlled and glorified? What was their political function? Hélène Blais, Professor of Contemporary History at the École normale supérieure-PSL, member of the Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine and the Institut Universitaire de France, will lead this lecture. She wrote The Empire of Nature: A History of Colonial Botanical Gardens (Late 18th Century–1930s) (Champ Vallon, 2023), for which she received the Ville de Paris’s Augustin Thierry Prize.
Price: 01 44 78 80 50 or
Source: paris.fr — photo: Public Domain (Marianne North - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)