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Sex, Botany and Empire

The way that botanists divide up flowers reminds me of the way Africa was divided into countries by politicians,' Miles Kington once remarked. He was taking the mickey, of course, yet having read Patricia Fara's absorbing biography of Joseph Banks, creator of Kew Gardens and grand vizier of eighteenth-century British science, it seems the humourist was wiser than he realised.

He happily entwined botanical research with visions of imperial grandeur. These are scarcely common intellectual bedfellows. However, Fara is emphatic: 'Banks provides a marvellous illustration of how science and the British empire grew rich and powerful together.' Banks, who emerges as a vain, cunning manipulator of both media and royalty, sailed as a botanist on Captain Cook's Endeavour. He returned to Britain in 1771 with a horde of native artefacts; strange antipodean specimens; Omai, a young Tahitian chief; and a desire to turn the fruits (and vegetables) of his research to the state's service.

Banks ruled the Royal Society as his personal fiefdom for more than 40 years, and became convinced that biology could help George III establish his burgeoning empire. Thus he backed projects to break China's tea monopoly by secretly shipping plants to India, turn Ceylon into a coffee-growers haven, and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the Caribbean so they could be used as food for slaves, the latter plan coming unstuck when his prot¨¦g¨¦, Captain Bligh, suffered the indignity of mutiny, though he did succeed at a second attempt.

Our empire was, therefore, not just the product of our military might and trade expertise, but of 'Banksian imperial botany', as Fara terms it.

Certainly, the author makes a convincing case for his historical impact, a role that is generally ignored in the UK today, though he is venerated in Australia, a country to which he gave the name Botany Bay and the idea that it be used as a penal colony. (Australians are clearly forgiving people.)

Thus, the case for botany's impact on empire is well made by Fara. The sex of the title is more problematic, however, and seems to be based on two different, rather vague strands of historical detective work. The first concerns Banks's devotion to Carl Linnaeus, whose grand classification system has become the bedrock of biology and whose botanical researches were largely based on the sexual behaviour of plants.

Second, it is clear Banks liked the attentions of the ladies. In Tahiti, one dancer pirouetted naked in front of him, he recalled, after which he 'took her by the hand and led her to the tents', no doubt to discuss Linnean classification. Whether such conduct merits the clear implication that sex was a critical factor in the establishing of our empire is a different matter. On the other hand, it makes a cracking book title.

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