Lecture | COGLOSS
Finding God on the Malabar Coast: The Religious Origins of the Hortus Malabaricus?
- Date
- Thursday 14 September 2023
- Time
- Series
- COGLOSS seminars 2023-2024
- Location
-
Gravensteen
Pieterskerkhof 6
2311 SR Leiden - Room
- 0.11
On Thursday, the 14th of September, Daniel Margócsy will present a talk titled “Finding God on the Malabar Coast: The Religious Origins of the Hortus Malabaricus?” at the COGLOSSession. It will take place in Gravensteen 0.11 at 11.15 hrs.
Presentation abstract
This talk examines the making of the Hortus malabaricus, the foundational work of Dutch colonial botany, from the perspective of Matthew of Saint Joseph, a discalced Carmelite monk who works with Hendrik Rheede tot Drakesteyn, the author named on the title page of this work. Matthew of Saint Joseph's extensive manuscripts offers a new perspective on the political and scientific networks that enabled the production of the Hortus malabaricus on the Malabar Coast, raising important questions about the nature of the colonial encounter in Cochin and its neighbouring areas. In particular, it will be argued that Matthew of Saint Joseph's religion and mysticism may have played an important undercurrent in negotiating plant knowledge exchanges in the Dutch colonial world.
Speaker
Daniel Margócsy (Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Cambridge) has kindly agreed to present a talk while he is in Leiden next month. Margócsy’s publications include the monograph Commercial Visions: Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (2014) and the more recently co-authored The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions (2018), besides other articles, edited volumes, and collaborations that combine colonial and global history, the history of science, and the study of visual cultures. He is also working on a book tentatively titled Transportations: Cosmologies of Logistics in the Dutch Colonial World.
