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Book Reviews Book Reviews global terms, and it is an exemplary work of Neil Chambers (ed.), The scientific scholarship. Thus, even its limitations offer correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, instructive lessons for historians engaged in 1765–1820, 6 vols, London, Pickering & similar methodologies. Although the chapters Chatto, 2007, total pages: 2823, £595.00, by Sorokina, David-Fox, and Krementsov give $995.00 (hardback 978-1-85196-766-7). some flavour of the Russian side of this story, the volume focuses more on Germans in Even during his own lifetime, impressions Russia than the reverse. This is partially an of Joseph Banks (1743–1820) diverged artefact—one third of the volume focuses on widely. Although celebrated in the popular Zeiss’s activities in Russia. Yet, this press as the dashing young explorer who had imbalance raises important questions. Were sailed to Australia with James Cook, Banks Russian scientists and physicians prevented was caricaturized by disaffected critics at the from going abroad? If they left Russia, did Royal Society as a bumbling virtuoso who they return home? Did they cultivate refused to recognize—let alone international friendships? Could they be understand—the significance of mathematical “entrepreneurial”? Can that framework even physics. Whereas James Boswell remarked apply to individuals or institutions from that Banks resembled a placid elephant who centrally planned economies? Did the rise of would allow you to play with his proboscis, Communism ever lead to the migration of harsher colleagues accused him of coarse Russian scientists and physicians to Germany? behaviour and sycophantically ingratiating Balanced transnational histories demand himself with George III. answers to such reciprocal questions, and this After his death, other versions of Banks volume does not fully rise to that challenge. proliferated, continually tailored over time to Obviously, the authors of this ambitious fit various political ends and historiographical volume could not probe every problem or trends. Victorian modernizers tried to make ponder every silence. Yet the depth of their themselves look progressive by dismissing sources indicates another difficulty arising from him as an old-fashioned autocrat, but although analysing transnational relations. It is not they effectively suppressed his memory in enough to know that actors and institutions are Britain, Banks was revived in the early engaging in different conversations. Rather, twentieth century as the Founding Father of those incomplete and often contradictory Australia, where his publicity value as the conversations exist within at least two fully nation’s first scientist still outweighs critiques formed contexts. The nuances of those contexts of his involvement in the early penal are difficult to develop adequately in writing, settlements. Australian biographers have yet that development is crucial as it reveals the repeatedly argued that, despite his minimal ways that political and economic forces shaped publication record, Banks played a crucial role policy developments in medicine. in science’s history because of the Finally, although individuals and administrative innovations he introduced at institutions re-emerge as the locus of home and abroad during his forty-two year transnational science and medicine, it is reign as President of the Royal Society. The important to recognize that their work was definitive cradle-to-grave account remains comparatively superficial and insignificant. Harold Carter’s detailed tome of 1988, which Transnational studies fascinate precisely extolled Banks’s domestic influence and because what they reveal to us about the international achievements; since then, other development of national styles of science and scholars—notably David Miller and John medicine remains unclear. Gascoigne—have presented more nuanced analyses demonstrating Banks’s systematic Stephen T Casper, strategies for consolidating the authority of the Clarkson University Royal Society and forging a mutually 541 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.93, on 01 Oct 2021 at 10:07:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300003045 Book Reviews beneficial alliance between science, state and One immediate reward of this new empire. Now that globalization has become a collection is being able to see at a glance the historical buzzword, Banks is emerging as a sheer variety of matters with which Banks key figure in imperial expansion whose dealt on a daily basis. Within just a few weeks powerful grip extended around the world. around the end of 1780, Banks was Banks was a prolific writer, sending out an complaining about the rent arrears being run estimated 40,000 letters and receiving back up by his tenants, explaining why he refused to perhaps 60,000. Often enclosing plant and believe that ants use tools for moving large mineral specimens (with occasional gifts of weights, worrying about the legality of “Excellent Biscuits” or “2 brace of Grouse”), changing the Royal Society meeting times, his correspondence covered an extraordinary and learning about the unfortunate man who range of topics, reflecting Banks’s influential coughed up a live toad he had unknowingly engagement in scientific politics, agricultural ingested several weeks earlier with some reform and industrial innovation both in watercress. Nearly forty years later, despite Britain and overseas. Sadly, even though he battling against chronic gout, Banks was still maintained a meticulous filing system, preoccupied with an immense breadth of Banks’s papers were dispersed and selectively problems, including cabbages frozen by destroyed, so that now only around 20,000 exceptionally bitter frosts, delays in exporting survive, scattered throughout the world in an alabaster sarcophagus from Egypt, the public libraries and private collections. latest experiments on polarized light, and Reduced to around a quarter, these letters, Dutch rivalry in Asia. nevertheless, offer an exceptionally rich As well as staying in touch with close resource for studying the global transformations colleagues, Banks negotiated with unknown that took place in the decades around 1800. correspondents all over the world. Eminent Historians were delighted when in 1989, Carter figures such as Benjamin Franklin, William established the Banks Archive Project at the Hamilton and William Herschel feature among Natural History Museum, with the aim of his regular contacts, but this collection copying and cataloguing all the existing letters includes many less distinguished to make them readily accessible. correspondents who sent in not only reports of The first product of the Project’s ambitious experiments or unusual events, but also long-term programme was a taster volume of requests for advice or pleas for help. 137 letters, edited by the Museum’s Neil Appearing particularly often in this collection Chambers, and designed to indicate the is Charles Blagden, Banks’s major aide at the changing patterns of Banks’s interests over his Royal Society; the 314 letters printed here long life. The most recent publication, also reveal fluctuations in the two colleagues’ edited by Chambers, is a six-volume edition personal relationship as well as their combined reproducing 2215 of Banks’s scientific papers. impact on scientific affairs. Arranged chronologically, these letters have Unfortunately, although Chambers’ six- been transcribed from over a hundred volume edition is extremely welcome and has archives, and most of them have never been many excellent features, its value is limited published before. For consistency with earlier because the guidelines set up by Carter some publications, Chambers has broadly adopted twenty years ago still dominate the Project’s Carter’s editorial principles, although he has publishing strategy. Carter himself had already introduced some substantial improvements. produced The sheep and wool correspondence, Most importantly, Banks’s erratic spelling and and he decreed that subsequent collections breathless punctuation are here faithfully should also be organized thematically into reproduced, along with deletions and supposedly mutually exclusive categories such insertions, as well as full details of addresses, as Political & Diplomatic Matters, Agriculture & greetings and endorsements. Horticulture, and the Middle East & Africa. 542 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.93, on 01 Oct 2021 at 10:07:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300003045 Book Reviews As Chambers implicitly acknowledges in his “govern the Negroes far more mildly” than introduction, sorting documents by such “the Tyranny of their arbitrary Princes”. anachronistic criteria restricts the possibility of However genuine his desire to improve the lot pursuing modern analytical concerns. The of resident Africans, when read together, these letters he has chosen are “scientific” only in two closely-dated letters do suggest that the relatively narrow sense that they contain Banks’s comments on beetroot were related to copious details of experiments, collections and his interests in supporting the West Indian observations. Fascinating as many of them are, plantations, whose massive sugar output they do not necessarily reveal how Banks contributed to the profitable circulation of meshed exchanges of information
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