Londa Schiebringer is the John L. Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University, and is a leading international authority on gender and science. Her work centers around the history of women’s participation in science; gender in the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge. Her 2004 work, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, focuses on agnotology surrounding 17th and 18th century colonial abortifacients. Her work argues that colonial abortifacients were deliberately kept out of 17th and 18th century European pharmacopeia, physician discourse, and taxonomic definitions due in part because of the gendered roles of medicine and the colonial enterprise, but also because mercantilist states actively sought a role in determining colonial and domestic populations. Much of Schiebringer’s work focuses on the willing ignorance of colonial botanists and physicians such as Hans Sloane, who discredited indigenous and enslaved medicinal practices, and the abortifacient knowledge of indigenous and enslaved people, arguing in the process that the medical knowledge tradition in indigenous Caribbean communities and enslaved communities suffered through the early modern period with their knowledge intact.
While Schiebringer’s work is not so monographically fixated as to deter a popular audience, the structure of her arguments necessitates a small understanding of 17th and 18th scientific discourse and gender beliefs in European and colonial societies. Though without previous knowledge, the work is written in an accessible manner, and touches on postcolonial theory enough to intrigue the historian, and leave the general reader undisturbed.
The structure of Plants and Empire stems from the tracing of medical and cultural knowledge about the peacock flower (flos pavonis) after it was discovered by Maria Sibylla Merian in Surinam and classified by her as an indigenous abortifacient. The book flows spatially, following the development of the peacock flower in European and colonial bodies of knowledge. Each chapter bounces from the colonial botanical enterprise to the royal gardens and societies of Europe, in the process showing how transatlantic knowledge, or transatlantic agnotology, was part of larger scientific, mercantilist, and social, transatlantic power negotiation between states and scientists alike.
Chapter one introduces the reader to the variety of practicing botanists in the colonial Atlantic. From Voyaging botanists such as Hans Sloane and Maria Merian, the unnamed and underappreciated indigenous and enslaved botanical assistants, the European armchair botanists such as Linnaeus, and even the “Biopirates”, Schiebringer shows how botany was both a state and scientific enterprise. Chapter two explores bioprospecting, and the diffusion of colonial, European, enslaved, and indigenous cultures that resulted from botanists work in the colonial field. This chapter also portrays some colonial botany as a collaborative endeavor between cultures rather than part of a larger colonial extraction economy. Chapters one and two, while written with excellent prose and contain interesting historical information, are clearly designed to immerse the general reader in the transatlantic world. The following three chapters will be of most interest to any historians of science and/or gender.
Chapter three introduces the moral economy surrounding discussions of abortion and abortifacients in the transatlantic world. It not only discusses cultural changes in Europe surrounding midwifery and abortion, but also examines changes in indigenous and enslaved medical culture and abortion knowledge. Much like the debates surrounding “ensoulment” in Europe during the early colonial era, chapter three is where Schiebringer’s work is “ensouled” with the most postcolonial theory; Schiebringer goes to great length to defend and highlight the abortion practices and medical knowledge of indigenous and enslaved cultures in this chapter, and despite the limited material available to her (read sources), she does an excellent job reinvigorating the medical traditions of colonized peoples.
Chapter four brings us back to the peacock flower and its reception and taxonomic processes the abortifacient was put through in Europe. This chapter also deals with the processes of knowledge transfer in the colonial transatlantic, and the place of abortifacients and emmenagogues in 18th century European pharmacopeia. In particular, this chapter is noteworthy for showing how traditional European knowledge of abortifacients was pushed aside in the 18th century as experimentation under state purview coincided with abortion becoming illegal in many western European countries; As Schiebringer says, “As research on drug mechanisms, effects, and reactions increased, certain undesirable drugs were pushed aside,” (193). Chapter 5 takes a deep dive into the rather fiery discourse surrounding botanical nomenclature in the 18th century, showing in addition how a certain linguistic imperialism practiced by European botanists such as Linnaeus (whom Schiebringer barely attempts to hide her distaste for) subverted indigenous and enslaved peoples knowledge systems by imposing Latin and Greek nomenclature.
Schiebringer’s work is a nice change of pace for a history of science historiography that too often seeks to write about male scientists while only given cursory acknowledgment to female practitioners during the 17th and 18th centuries. In defense of other historians, historic material surrounding these historic phenomena overwhelmingly favors the male perspective; it is credit to Schiebringer that she dove into scant sources surrounding indigenous and enslaved medical knowledge traditions and was able to produce a work that highlights the agency of colonized peoples within the era of the “scientific revolution”. The sources she employs, primarily the correspondence and journals of botanists and leading natural historians of the 17th and 18th centuries from both sides of the Atlantic, allow Schiebringer to adequately argue for a constructed agnotology concerning colonial abortifacients. Seeing as these botanists, men of letters, and statesmen (some serving all of these social positions simultaneously), reveals the sociocultural impetus behind the lack of experimentation surrounding colonial abortifacients.
Schiebringer work does an excellent job of portraying indigenous and enslaved peoples medical knowledge tradition as a form of resistance against the colonial enterprise. In particular, her claim that colonial abortifacients were used by female enslaved and indigenous people because of the rape culture that constituted gender relations within Caribbean colonies was an excellent analysis of colonial power dynamics.
Concerning HIST 635, Schiebringer’s work does an excellent job filling in the gaps on indigenous and enslaved peoples that Collecting the World omits. In addition, it adds much appreciated colonial context to the culture of knowledge creation during the “scientific revolution”. Though we have seen gender dynamics before in the class, Recipes immediately coming to mind, by structuring the book around the peacock flower discovered by Merian, Schiebringer forcefully includes females as producers of scientific knowledge and practitioners of developing experimentation during this period. Previously, while we have seen some women perform science, their contributions have mostly been relegated to a domestic sphere of knowledge production and experimentation. By virtue of giving Merian a critical role in her work, Scheibringer firmly places women within the ranks of prominent 17th and 18th scientific figures who so often enjoy the attention of scholars.
