Sex, Botany & Empire by Patricia Fara, Icon Books, 拢9.99, ISBN 1840464887 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
YOU get your money鈥檚 worth and more in this entertaining book from Patricia Fara. It鈥檚 about Linnaeus鈥檚 system of classification of plants but it鈥檚 more about Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied James Cook鈥檚 expedition to Australia.
Cook鈥檚 ship, Endeavour, called at Tahiti and found what seemed, to the ship鈥檚 company, a free and easy society that resembled a prelapsarian paradise. Banks, an indefatigable collector of exotic plants was alleged to be as indefatigable in his amorous dalliances with Tahitian females. Linnaeus鈥檚 system was based on sex, male and female, and employed erotic terms to describe the structure of flowers, for instance. The Encyclopaedia Britannica of the time said, 鈥淎 man would not naturally expect to meet with disgusting strokes of obscenity in a new system of botany, but obscenity is the very basis of the Linnaean system.鈥� Botany was proscribed for women.
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Banks鈥檚 exploits in the Pacific therefore made him an inevitable target for satire. Contemporary cartoons and lampoons of him are a pleasurable feature of this book. But Banks, usually briefly mentioned in reference books as holding the record as the longest serving President of the Royal Society 鈥� 42 years 鈥� was a much more vigorous and complicated man than a rake with an interest in botany. He believed passionately in science and the spread of the British Empire. Fara goes as far as to say he practised 鈥渋mperial botany鈥�.
He was an acute tactician in society and had the ear of King George III, who supported him in many of the enterprises that made him rich. Banks turned Kew Gardens in London into a world-famous institution, and his research into plant life proved profitable for the burgeoning Empire, introducing tea growing to India, coffee to Ceylon and breadfruit to the West Indies. He was not above somewhat unorthodox methods: arranging for merino sheep to be smuggled from Spain to England to improve the quality of English wool. Some of these sheep founded the eventually enormous Australian sheep farming industry.
Sex, Botany and Empire is a rollicking read and Banks is centre stage. He is perhaps not a character palatable to modern tastes 鈥� constantly on the lookout for trade opportunities, convinced of English superiority and with an eye for personal gain and prestige. But he is impressive nonetheless and this tribute to him is overdue.