Science and colonial expansion: the role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens

particularly in the biology of the nineteenth century, is a played-out force. It is Nietzsche who interests himself in the political task of avoiding that most disliked of scientific activities as Foucault sees it: the activity of investigation, of surveillance, and of containment. Foucault in that sense is an advocate of a number of tactical responses to the invasive strategies of the human sciences; an advocate of secrecy, as against statistical science; an advocate of immediate punishment as against the humanitarian impulse of a reforming judiciary and an optimistic psychiatry; an advocate of pleasure as against pointlessly accumulated knowledge. The exact nature of Foucault's politics are obscure and will no doubt remain so, but his translator has done him valuable service. Foucault's philosophy has been explicated without being appropriated. And his place as a figure whose theoretical task awaits completion will now be understood by many who may come to feel that they can now join with him, and in that sense aid the completion itself. What was it about greenhouses that appealed so much to Victorian imagery? Like a gigantic conservatory, the Crystal Palace was erected in Hyde Park as an architectural monument to Britain's domination of world trade. Not so far away, another glass dome served a similar purpose. The great Palm House at Kew trumpeted the achievements of British botany in the commercial arena, achievements that laid the foundation for a number of highly profitable and strategically important plant-based industries across the globe. Indeed, much of the wealth of the Empire originated from the Royal Botanic Gardens. Great fortunes were built on the transfer of rubber, tea, sugar, coffee, bananas, and other commodities from their native habitat to British dominions and colonies where a similar environment was combined with large pools of available labour. The gardens at Kew played a major role in advising on and supervising such transfers. By studying the horticulture, the plantation management, the harvesting, and replanting of crops, Kew's botanists made it possible to convert scientific knowledge into hard cash. Lucile H. Brockway's book The role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens takes a long cool look at the social and economic effects of such government-sponsored botany. She describes three case histories-rubber, cinchona, and sisal-in an attempt to explain the build-up of colonial industries, the flow of information and advice from Kew, and the changing social relations of the people and nations involved. …