Creolised Science
Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century Indo-Pacific

Truly global study of creolised plant knowledge in eighteenth-century Mauritius, exploring how people came together to create new practices.

Dorit Brixius (Author)

9781009200448, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 April 2024

276 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'… a valuable addition to the growing corpus of literature that roots global knowledge-making in its local contexts.' Anna Winterbottom, American Historical Review

This rich, deeply researched study offers the first comprehensive exploration of cross-cultural plant knowledge in eighteenth-century Mauritius. Using the concept of creolisation – the process by which elements of different cultures are brought together to create entangled and evolving new entities – Brixius examines the production of knowledge on an island without long-established traditions of botany as understood by Europeans. Once foreign plants and knowledge arrived in Mauritius, they were adapted to new environmental circumstances and a new socio-cultural space. Brixius explores how French colonists, settlers, mediators, labourers and enslaved people experienced and shaped the island's botanical past, centring the contributions of subaltern actors. By foregrounding neglected non-European actors from both Africa and Asia, within a melting pot of cultivation traditions from around the world, she presents a truly global history of botanical knowledge.

Introduction
1. The limits of French colonial visions and science
2. The acquisition of knowledge and plants, from Madagascar to China
3. Agriculture and everyday knowledge
4. Enslaved people as knowledge carriers
5. The cross-cultural quest for spices in Southeast Asia
6. Materials, environment, and the application of knowledge
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of engineering & technology [TBX]