The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk, 1835-1844: Explorations on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society, 1835-1839


Book Description

This is the first of a pair of volumes publishing the unedited full reports of Robert Schomburgk's travels in Guiana between 1835 and 1844, previously available only in greatly abridged and heavily edited versions. Sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, between 1835 and 1839 Schomburgk explored much of the interior of the colony and completed the arduous overland journey to the Orinoco to connect his survey with that of Alexander von Humboldt in Brazil.




The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk, 1835-1844


Book Description

This is the second of a pair of volumes publishing the unedited full reports of Robert Schomburgk's travels in Guiana between 1835 and 1844, previously available only in greatly abridged and heavily edited versions. It covers the journeys made by Schomburgk when surveying and establishing the boundaries of British Guiana, now Guyana, between 1841 and 1843.




The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835-1844


Book Description

This is the first of a pair of volumes publishing the unedited full reports of Robert Schomburgk's travels in Guiana between 1835 and 1844, previously available only in greatly abridged and heavily edited versions. Sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, between 1835 and 1839 Schomburgk explored much of the interior of the colony and completed the arduous overland journey to the Orinoco to connect his survey with that of Alexander von Humboldt in Brazil.




The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk Volume II The Boundary Survey, 1840–1844


Book Description

This is the second of a pair of volumes publishing the unedited full reports of Schomburgk's travels in Guiana between 1835 and 1844, previously available only in greatly abridged and heavily edited versions. After his explorations in Guiana between 1835 and 1839 on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society, which are the subject of Volume I of The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835-1844, Robert Schomburgk travelled to London. He was appointed Her Majesty's Commissioner for Boundaries with the duty to survey the boundaries of British Guiana, hitherto undefined. His surveys between 1841 and 1843 consisted of three journeys. The first took him to the mouth of the Orinoco River, from where he traced the boundary south-westward to the Cuyuni River, before returning to Georgetown. The second journey involved the survey of the boundary with Brazil: first, south to the sources of the Takutu River; and then north to Mount Roraima. In the third he covered the boundary with Dutch Guiana (modern Surinam), which involved an arduous trip down the length of the Corentyne River. Schomburgk returned to London in 1844 and was knighted for his services. Volume II of The Guiana Travels contains his reports of these journeys. In abbreviated form they appeared in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. Here they are published in full, including the material censored by the Colonial Office, which mainly details abuses of the native population committed by Venezuelans and Brazilians. In an 'Epilogue' an account is provided of his later career. The volume also includes two appendices: a summary of the boundary disputes which arose as a result of Schomburgk's survey and a vocabulary of vernacular plant names.




The Plant-Hunter's Atlas


Book Description

RHS Staff Pick of the Year 2021 Spectator Gardening Book of the year 2021 'A refreshingly insightful history of plant introductions.' - Roy Lancaster Travel the world with extraordinary tales of the botanical discoveries that have shaped empires, built (and destroyed) economies, revolutionised medicine and advanced our understanding of science. Circling the globe from Australia's Botany Bay to the Tibetan plateau, from the deserts of Southern Africa to the jungles of Brazil, this book presents an incredible cast of characters - dedicated researchers and reckless adventurers, physicians, lovers and thieves. Meet dauntless Scots explorer David Douglas and visionary Prussian thinker Alexander von Humboldt, the 'Green Samurai' Mikinori Ogisu and the intrepid 17th century entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian - the first woman known to have made a living from science. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 botanical artworks from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this absorbing book tells the stories of how plants have travelled across the world - from the missions of the Pharaohs right up to 21st century seed-banks and the many new and endangered species being named every year. *** THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW is a world-famous research organisation and a major international visitor attraction. It harnesses the power of its science, the rich diversity of its gardens and collections to unearth why plants and fungi matter to everyone. Its aspiration is to end the extinction crisis and help create a world where nature and biodiversity are protected, valued and managed sustainably.




Tropical Bioproductivity


Book Description

This book investigates the fundamental role that tropical bioproductivity - or more specifically net primary productivity - has played in shaping the global geographies of food, finance, governance and people. The book examines the basic astronomical and thermal properties of our planet to illustrate the dynamic nature of the tropics and how the region resides at the very heart of global energetics, driving the environmental flows that shape planetary climate and bioproductivity. The author explores how the region’s relatively small, but hyper-productive, land area provided the groundswell for the economic, social, political and demographic changes that fuelled empires, European colonialism and nation-building. Also covered are discussions on how the critical intake of capital needed to fuel the industrial and technological revolutions driving modern globalization was first expropriated from the tropics by harnessing the region’s natural productivity and biological crop diversity and then transforming it into tradeable commodities using the inhabitants' labour and knowledge. With modern tropical nations accounting for the bulk of people living in poverty and registering some of the highest income disparities, the author presents cross-cutting evidence showing that their histories and the persistence of expropriating institutions have fostered anocratic tendencies, poor governance, unorthodox financial flows and mass migration. Tropical Bioproductivity cuts across vast geographies, topics and histories to deliver a readable narrative that links people, places and events with the environmental mechanics of our planet. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental studies, economics, history, agriculture, anthropology and geography.




Darwin and the Memory of the Human


Book Description

This book shows how Victorian naturalists transformed their encounters with South America into influential accounts of biological change.




Lawful Conquest?


Book Description

The global expansion of European colonization is commonly perceived as lawful according to the valid European colonial law of the time. This book is substantially challenging this belief by uncovering its legal justifications based on discovery and terra nullius as retrospectively created legal fictions and demonstrating it ́s untenability in practice. Focused on the critical reconstruction of Spanish and Dutch colonization practices in northeastern South America, Trinidad and Tobago between 1498 and 1817, the book offers an illuminating view on the European shadow of the colonial past in the Americas. Based on the application of an innovative comparative spatio-legal Global History approach to 1,770 excavated European colonial written sources from archives of both sides of the Atlantic in comparison to the colonial legal provisions of Europe ́s most influential legal writers, the book, moreover, provides a substantial argument to the contemporary Caribbean-European reparation debate in favor of the return of Indigenous Peoples ́ historical territories. Therefore, the book calls for the extension of the traditional territory approach to reparations of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).




Blood on the River


Book Description

Winner of the Cundill History Prize Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR A breathtakingly original work of history that uncovers a massive enslaved persons' revolt that almost changed the face of the Americas Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Blood on the River also won two of the highest honors for works of history, capturing both the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Cundill History Prize in 2021. A book with profound relevance for our own time, Blood on the River “fundamentally alters what we know about revolutionary change” according to Cundill Prize juror and NYU history professor Jennifer Morgan. Nearly two hundred sixty years ago, on Sunday, February 27, 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice—in present-day Guyana—launched a rebellion that came amazingly close to succeeding. Blood on the River is the explosive story of this little-known revolution, one that almost changed the face of the Americas. Michael Ignatieff, chair of the Cundill Prize jury, declared that Blood on the River “tells a story so dramatic, so compelling that no reader will be able to put the book down.” Drawing on nine hundred interrogation transcripts collected by the Dutch when the rebellion collapsed, and which were subsequently buried in Dutch archives, historian Marjoleine Kars has constructed what Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Eric Foner calls “a gripping narrative that brings to life a forgotten world.”




Visual Voyages


Book Description

An unprecedented visual exploration of the intertwined histories of art and science, of the old world and the new From the voyages of Christopher Columbus to those of Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin, the depiction of the natural world played a central role in shaping how people on both sides of the Atlantic understood and imaged the region we now know as Latin America. Nature provided incentives for exploration, commodities for trade, specimens for scientific investigation, and manifestations of divine forces. It also yielded a rich trove of representations, created both by natives to the region and visitors, which are the subject of this lushly illustrated book. Author Daniela Bleichmar shows that these images were not only works of art but also instruments for the production of knowledge, with scientific, social, and political repercussions. Early depictions of Latin American nature introduced European audiences to native medicines and religious practices. By the 17th century, revelatory accounts of tobacco, chocolate, and cochineal reshaped science, trade, and empire around the globe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, collections and scientific expeditions produced both patriotic and imperial visions of Latin America. Through an interdisciplinary examination of more than 150 maps, illustrated manuscripts, still lifes, and landscape paintings spanning four hundred years, Visual Voyages establishes Latin America as a critical site for scientific and artistic exploration, affirming that region's transformation and the transformation of Europe as vitally connected histories.




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