Dutch pre-colonial botany and Rumphius's Ambonese Herbal

Abstract

All major contributions to SE Asian botany in the 17 th century were made by servants of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC)–the first pre-colonial trading company with shareholders and a form of corporate governance. Although primarily, and often exclusively, interested in maximizing profits through trading multiple commodities along the routes from Holland to W and S Africa, Mauritius, Arabia, Persia, S India, Sri Lanka, Java, the Moluccas, China, and Japan, the VOC also had an interest in the study of native plants near their trading posts. Medicinal plants from Asia were needed for the health care of VOC employees because European simples were not efficacious against tropical diseases and exotic plants and other natural curiosities were much coveted by the wealthy traders for their private collections. On the first VOC fleet of 1602, apothecaries and surgeons had already been instructed by Carolus Clusius, the Erasmus of 16 th century botany and founder of the Leiden Botanical Garden, to collect herbarium specimens and to document and draw any interesting plants encountered on the long voyage – not just of the major spice species. The three greatest 17 th century pioneers of Asian botany: Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein, Paul Hermann, and Georg Everard Rumphius were probably unaware of that early instruction when they embarked on their comprehensive exploration of regional tropical floras. Most remarkably, the most productive of these three, Rheede and Rumphius, were self-taught amateurs without university training, but inspired by a great interest and love of tropical nature. With richly illustrated, elaborate descriptions of almost 1300 flowering plant species, mostly from the Moluccas and other parts of SE Asia the monumental Herbarium Amboinense by Rumphius—written between 1660 and 1690, and not published until 1741– 1755, ranks as a solitary peak in the landscape of 17 th century tropical botany. The fact that initially the Governors of the VOC refused to have the manuscript of the herbal published upon its long delayed arrival in Amsterdam testifies to the great economic importance that was attached to information on potentially useful and commercial tropical plants and on the competitiveness of rivalling trading companies from other European countries. It also testifies to the uneasy and ambiguous attitudes the profit seeking governors of the VOC held to the advancement of science by their servants throughout the existence of the company. Rumphius’s life in the VOC as soldier, merchant and later as selfappointed naturalist on the island of Ambon was initially a happy and prosperous one. The fact that he persevered in his mission to complete The Ambonese Herbal and Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, as well as a History of Ambon after turning blind and suffering disastrous loss of parts of his manuscripts and plates in a great fire rightly earns him the titles of great visionary, alias the Blind Seer of Ambon, Job, and Plinius Indicus. His great respect for the indigenous people of the Moluccas and admiration for their traditional uses of plants pervades the entire Ambonese Herbal and are key to the continued scientific and societal importance of this masterpiece.

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