Captivity's Collections
eBook - ePub

Captivity's Collections

Science, Natural History, and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade

  1. 272 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Captivity's Collections

Science, Natural History, and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade

About this book

Cashews from Africa’s Gold Coast, butterflies from Sierra Leone, jalap root from Veracruz, shells from Jamaica—in the eighteenth century, these specimens from faraway corners of the Atlantic were tucked away onboard inhumane British slaving vessels. Kathleen S. Murphy argues that the era’s explosion of new natural knowledge was deeply connected to the circulation of individuals, objects, and ideas through the networks of the British transatlantic slave trade. Plants, seeds, preserved animals and insects, and other specimens were gathered by British slave ship surgeons, mariners, and traders at slaving factories in West Africa, in ports where captive Africans disembarked, and near the British South Sea Company’s trading factories in Spanish America. The specimens were displayed in British museums and herbaria, depicted in published natural histories, and discussed in the halls of scientific societies.

Grounded in extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Captivity’s Collections mines scientific treatises, slaving companies' records, naturalists' correspondence, and museum catalogs to recover in rich detail the scope of the slave trade’s collecting operations. The book reveals the scientific and natural historical profit derived from these activities and the crucial role of specimens gathered along the routes of the slave trade on emerging ideas in natural history.

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Yes, you can access Captivity's Collections by Kathleen S. Murphy in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & British History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Halftitle Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. CONTENTS
  7. ILLUSTRATIONS
  8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  9. Halftitle Page
  10. Introduction
  11. 1. Cannot on These Coasts Gather Amiss
  12. 2. Collecting for the Company
  13. 3. The Asiento’s Natural Historical Profits
  14. 4. Botany under the Cover of the Slave Trade
  15. 5. Searching for Goliath
  16. 6. A Flycatcher among Slave Traders
  17. Epilogue
  18. NOTES
  19. BIBLIOGRAPHY
  20. INDEX