Botanical Gardens and their Role in the Political Economy of Empire: Jamaica (1846–86)

Abstract

Abstract: A variety of plants were distributed across Jamaica from the island's botanical gardens during the second half of the nineteenth century. This work became increasingly important over the period dating from 1846 to the end of the century when succeeding superintendents (subsequently directors) eagerly promoted the scheme. Yet, each head differed in their reasons to send out this ‘useful’ flora. In this article I consider the three men in charge of the public gardens from 1846 to 1886 and the context in which they decided that local plant distribution was important to pursue. Diversification of economic crops occurred, despite the plantocracy arguing that sugar and a few other plantation plants were the be all and end all of the Jamaican agricultural economy. By contextualising this activity we can tentatively start to unpick the role of minor officials in colonial life and the development of an aim to enrol the island's petty agriculturalist in particular economies calibrated around ideas of free trade, class and ‘race’.

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