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RICHARD DRAYTON, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xxi+346. ISBN 0-300-05976-0. L25.00 (hardback).
The historiography of Empire and imperialism has long been dominated by the political, economic and military factors of European expansion. Historians in the European metropolises tended to present the conquest, economic exploitation and administration of overseas territory, according to Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and French ideas, as the spread of progress and civilization. They took into account only those developments on the periphery that triggered or hemmed in colonial expansion. The characteristics of countries and regions, indigenous peoples, their institutions and traditions, and their cultures, were often depicted as exotic or even barbaric, allowing the achievements of European settlers, merchants and colonial officials to shine even more brightly. More recent studies have gone beyond traditional themes and the metropolitan bias to include a great variety of issues, among them the impact of colonial experience on culture or, more specifically, on identity in the metropolis as well as in the (former) colony, or on the course and consequences of biological expansion.
Richard Drayton's intriguing exposition of the way science, in particular the `science of plants', and its central institution of exchange in Britain, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, accompanied and shaped British imperialism...