THE COLONIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE: A HISTORY OF PLANTS IN THE NEW WORLD (1492-1750)

Samir Boumediene

(Éditions des mondes à faire, 477 pages, 2016)

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Because he takes seriously the historical construction of the power relationships around plant knowledge, Samir Boumediene delivers a major work of social and cultural history of the sciences . . . He patiently builds, with impressive erudition and archival collection, a sensitive and political approach to what appropriation of knowledge means.

—Jérôme Lamy, Cahiers d’histoire

Tobacco, coca, cinchona bark, cacao, guaiac, peyote . . . The Colonization of Knowledge tells the violent story of the botanical conquest of Spanish America, from the first explorers to the scientific expeditions of the mid-eighteenth century. Examining botanical expeditions, drug trade, religious missions, and everyday life practices, Samir Boumediene shows how Europeans appropriated both New World materials and indigenous knowledge, along with how Amerindians and slaves protected their knowledge through secrecy, fraud, and poisoning. Botanical knowledge during the period of colonization played the role of a weapon that both sides sought to wield to the best of their abilities.

Boumediene retraces the circulation of plants from the Peruvian forests to the courts of the Old World as far as Spain, as well as the European rivalries that surrounded them, particularly in France and Italy. Certain plants were considered by the political, religious, and scientific authorities of Europe as commodities of the greatest importance; others were targeted by the inquisitorial police. The identification, exploitation, consumption, medicalization, or commodification of plants involved a vast set of knowledge practices and actors, from harvesters to patients, including healers, botanists, and merchants. These plants form a prism offering a perspective on not just the scientific but also the social, political, and economic relations between the varied actors, which sheds light on a major aspect of the modern era: the colonization of the Americas.

In this riveting, richly illustrated book, Boumediene pays close attention to the construction of knowledge via confrontation, reconfiguration, and selection, presenting the knowledge of American plants as one of the battlefields for the gradual conquest of the “Indies.”

Trained in history and epistemology, Samir Boumediene is a researcher at the Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités (CNRS, Lyon). He has published several articles on the history of drugs, medicine, and plants.