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

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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.

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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 with his gold and slaves that supported British political and commercial ambitions. This manufacturing industries. renders the collection of limited value for Another disappointing aspect of these six pursuing research into current or future volumes is the index. An irritating practical scholarly preoccupations such as problem arises from the decision to refer to globalization. letters by their sequential number, rather than For example, on 10 June 1799 (letter 1512), by the volume in which they appear. Since Banks sent off a review of experimental neither the dates nor the numbers of the letters procedures for preparing sweeteners from appear on the outside of the books or even carrots or beetroot, which he suggested might their title pages, locating a particular item can provide viable alternatives to sugar. This letter take some time. More fundamentally, appears less straightforwardly “scientific” searching for particular topics is difficult when juxtaposed with one that Banks had because virtually all the index entries are despatched only two days earlier to the same names of people, countries or organizations. recipient, Lord Liverpool, then an elderly but No rationale is given for the few still influential politician. The earlier letter exceptions—ballooning, inoculation, Peruvian makes clear the complexities of “science” at bark (a single mention in one short letter) and this period, yet although reproduced in steam power. Although many medical topics Chambers’ shorter chronological survey, it are touched on in this correspondence, picking does not appear in this thematic collection: them out will not be easy. appreciating the closeness of the dates entails The next two sets of volumes will be on searching both publications. Banks started by Iceland (to appear in 2008, according to a emphasizing the commercial benefits of Museum web-site of October 2007) and on the scientific research: “An expenditure, Pacific. Although there are clearly many apparently considerable, must however be “scientific” letters that could also be classified encountered in the outset; but as Science has on a regional basis, such overall organizational never yet been applied to the search of Gold decisions may well have been the best to make carried down by Torrents ... I feel sanguine two decades ago. Chambers gives no hopes that the produce of that valuable Metal indication of any plans to digitize the Banks may ... be increased in Africa to almost any correspondence, but viewing the Project from given extent.” A leading committee member the outside, it would seem sensible to consider of the African Association, Banks then spelled abandoning Carter’s original scheme, which out the close links between scientific relies on expensive thematic print exploration and imperial expansion: “the first publications, and to contemplate publishing step of government must be to secure to the the entire correspondence digitally with British Throne, either by Conquest or by effective search facilities. Funding has been a Treaty, the whole of the coast of Africa from major constraint since the Project’s inception, Arguin to Sierra Leone.” Banks also justified and its publications owe much to the dedicated what he called an “Experiment” by claiming commitment of scholarly editors. The Natural that a British-run trading company would History Museum deserves much praise for

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making Banks’s splendid correspondence Steven Shapin, seek to rise above the Whig more readily accessible. Despite their origins of the genre of the Cambridge limitations, these six volumes offer Histories, there is nevertheless a sense in the entertaining reading as well as a rich resource volume of looking forward to what comes for future scholarship. after, perhaps best encapsulated in the heading ‘The artist as scientist’ (p. 786) for the Patricia Fara, discussion of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) by the art historians Carmen Niekrasz and Clare College, Cambridge Claudia Swan—this is surely something that the editors should have picked up following Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston Shapin’s critique earlier in the volume of such (eds), The Cambridge history of science: vol. 3, anachronistic usage. Early modern science, Cambridge University The volume is divided into four parts, the Press, 2006, pp. xxvii, 865, illus., £90.00, first dealing with the ‘New nature’ followed $160.00 (hardback 978-0-521-57244-6). by discussion of personalities and sites of natural knowledge. This part includes some of What are Cambridge Histories for? They the most interesting chapters such as William go back to The Cambridge modern history Eamon on ‘Markets, piazzas, and villages’, planned and initially edited by Lord Acton Bruce Moran on ‘Courts and academies’, and (1834–1902) though he did not live to see the an especially excellent piece by Adrian Johns first volume published in 1902. It appeared at on ‘Coffeehouses and print shops’. The third a time when most Anglophone historians part is entitled ‘Dividing the study of nature’. believed that all the major facts of history Despite having some good pieces, the title could be encompassed within the boards of immediately raises the (unanswered) question thirteen volumes and that they demonstrated of whether it is historically appropriate to the progressive triumph of liberalism. Times divide natural philosophy, astronomy and have changed; many multi-volume astrology into three separate chapters, or Cambridge Histories have since been natural philosophy from mechanics. Such published ranging from Christianity and divisions do not lend themselves to the Literary Criticism to Russia, Turkey, understanding of the place of natural Libraries and now the History of Science in knowledge in contemporary society and eight volumes. Placed neatly on the open culture and may obscure links. What happens, access shelves of national and university and William Donahue’s chapter on astronomy libraries, such histories convey a sense of is a particularly good (i.e. bad) example, is authority which means that they are consulted that history becomes the study of the relations by scholars in other disciplines seeking between texts across time, rather than the apparently easy access to the subject. study of the relationships between In reality, in our post-modern world, these practitioners across geographical, social and volumes of collective effort, like any other cultural space. text, provide a selection that reflects the The tendency of this volume to split interests, knowledge, prejudices, etc. of the knowledge apart becomes most marked in the editors and individual contributors. And this fourth and final section ‘Cultural meanings of volume, of course, cannot by any means natural knowledge’. I do have to wonder represent the sum totality, pace Acton, of what whether having a set of chapters at the end of is known about science in the early modern the book entitled simply ‘Religion’, period defined as “from roughly 1490 to 1730” ‘Literature’, ‘Art’ (music is treated as part of (p. 1), that is from the voyages of Christopher acoustics), and ‘Gender’, ending up with a Columbus to the death of Isaac Newton. piece on European expansion is the best way Although some of the contributors, such as of discussing the place of natural knowledge

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