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dc.contributor.authorBRIXIUS, Dorit
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-12T13:00:06Z
dc.date.available2021-09-11T02:45:12Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.identifier.citationFlorence : European University Institute, 2017en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/47924
dc.descriptionDefence date: 11 September 2017en
dc.descriptionExamining Board: Prof Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute; Prof Regina Grafe, European University Institute; Prof Lissa Roberts, University of Twente; Dr Sujit Sivasundaram, University of Cambridgeen
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation examines the globally connected project of plant accumulation on Isle de France in the second half of the eighteenth century, focusing distinctly on the roles and activities of local actors embedded within wider Indo-Pacific networks and environments. Exploring the collection, transfer, and use of plants for subsistence and commerce as localised histories of the plant-related undertakings of a French island colony in the Indian Ocean, this dissertation asks what 'science' and 'empire' meant at a local level. Relying on an in-depth analysis of the plant-based projects of the island 'from below', it raises localised approaches to the transfer, production and practices of plant knowledge and plant material from a crosscultural perspective. Here, a bottom-up approach tells a very different story than a top-down one would: the whole botanical enterprise was fragile, experiential and significantly shaped by environmental conditions. Above all, it was built on collaboration between French actors and local populations from Africa to Asia. To tackle, juxtapose, and understand the possibilities and limits of the French actors and to look at plant knowledge as a nuanced localised knowledge-practice conducted by non-elite and elite actors in the Indo-Pacific worlds, this project couples approaches from the history of science and empire, oceanic history, environmental history, economic history, and global history. For this purpose, each chapter explores plant-related themes from different perspectives, arguing for the uncertainty of the cross-cultural botanical project of eighteenthcentury Isle de France. For one, the Isle de France project was built extensively on the contribution of widely neglected actors, such as slaves, indigenous informants, and gobetweens. For another, the island’s cultivational activities consisted of strongly experiential dynamics of local knowledge deriving from and produced in the Indo-Pacific context. The major aim of this dissertation is to re-assess the French botanical project in the Indian Ocean in order to understand the social, cultural, and natural complexities of plant-based knowledge production as a practice with respect to their local sites in both the Indo-Pacific worlds and the French colonial island as such.en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherEuropean University Instituteen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesEUIen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesHECen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesPhD Thesisen
dc.relation.replaceshttp://hdl.handle.net/1814/47925
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessen
dc.subject.lcshAgriculture -- France -- Ile-de-France -- History
dc.subject.lcshBotany -- France -- History -- 18th century
dc.subject.lcshÎle-de-France (France) -- History
dc.subject.lcshParis (France) -- Civilization -- Foreign influences -- History -- 18th century
dc.subject.lcshFrance -- Colonies -- History -- 18th century
dc.titleFrench empire on the ground : plants, peoples, and knowledge in the service of eighteenth-century Isle de Franceen
dc.typeThesisen
dc.identifier.doi10.2870/99113
eui.subscribe.skiptrue
dc.embargo.terms2021-09-11
dc.description.versionChapter 5 ‘Invisible empire : the spice quests in the Indo-Pacific (1748-1773)' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'A pepper acquiring nutmeg : Pierre Poivre, the French spice quests and the role of mediators in Southeast Asia, 1740s to 1770s' (2015) in the journal ‘Journal of the Western society for French history’


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