Nature's Government

Download or read book Nature's Government written by Richard Drayton and published by Orient Blackswan. This book was released on 2005 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature's Government is a daring attempt to juxtapose the histories of Britain, western science and imperialism. It shows how colonial expansion led to complex kinds of knowledge and in particular the way in which science and botany was fed by information culled from exploration of the world. Science was useful to imperialism as it guided the exploitation of exotic environments and provided legitimacy to conquest. It is in this respect that botanic gardens as providers of knowledge, aesthetic perfection and agricultural plenty, became instruments of government, by the late eighteenth century in Britain and the British Empire. At the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, 'improving' the world became a potent argument for both the patronage of science at home and Britain's prerogatives abroad. This South Asian edition has a special introduction by Mahesh Rangarajan.