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Making Natural History: Doing the Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2010

Bettina Dietz
Bettina Dietz
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Independent Historian
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Extract

The image of the Enlightenment as an era has proved to be remarkably constant, repeatedly resisting protracted and subtle attempts to de-ideologize, pluralize, and reperiodize it. Historians have turned away from a pure history of ideas in favor of a cultural history of publishing and reading, a social history of intellectual sociability, and the situating of ideas within historical-political constellations. The concept of a homogeneous, quasi-monolithic Enlightenment has been pluralized and parceled into a large number of geographically and thematically distinct Enlightenments. At the same time, the chronological scope of research interests has been extended and refined. Whereas the decades of the high Enlightenment in Britain and France were the initial focus of interest, the phase of the radical early Enlightenment has since achieved a firm place in a total panorama that also takes account of chronologically different developments in various national contexts. Nonetheless it is true, although necessarily a generalization, to say that the interpretation of the Enlightenment as a whole concentrates on an “Enlightenment thinking” characterized as rational, critical of dogma, and systematic, and whose main emphases are seen as political ideas, philosophy, criticism of superstition, and the experimental sciences. The intention here is to focus on the aspect of active mass participation in the intellectual project of the Enlightenment and to supplement the image of an intellectual history centered on the triad of ideas, authors, and texts (more rarely books) with a perspective that focuses on learned practice.

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Central European History , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 25 - 46
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2010

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References

1 In this context special reference should be made to Chartier's, Roger work on the cultural practices of reading in the eighteenth century: Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d'Ancien Régime (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987)Google Scholar; Chartier, Roger, Au bord de la falaise: L'histoire entre certitudes et inquiétude (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998)Google Scholar; and to Darnton's, Robert analysis of the economic dynamic of one of the largest publishing projects of the French Enlightenment: The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the “Encyclopédie,” 1775–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1979)Google Scholar. Situating ideas within historical-political constellations was oriented above all by the Cambridge School. Three of Quentin Skinner's fundamental essays can be found in Tully, James, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 1988)Google Scholar. Cf. in addition, Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, vol. 1, Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. On John Pocock's positions, cf. Pocock, John, “The Concept of a Language and the métier d'historien: Some Considerations on Practice,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Pagden, Anthony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 19–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pocock, John, “Theory in History: Problems of Context and Narrative,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. Dryzek, John S. et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 163–74Google Scholar.

2 Reference should here be made to numerous studies of the Enlightenment in different countries. See Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikulás, eds., Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jüttner, Siegfried and Schlobach, Jochen, eds., Europäische Aufklärung(en). Einheit und nationale Vielfalt (Hamburg: Meiner, 1992)Google Scholar.

3 See Jacob, Margaret C., The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981)Google Scholar; Israel, Jonathan, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 A selection of publications on these issues: Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Goodman, Dena, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Censer, Jack, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischer, Ernst, Haefs, Wilhelm, and Mix, York-Gothart, eds., Von Almanach bis Zeitung. Ein Handbuch der Medien in Deutschland, 1700–1800 (Munich: Beck, 1999)Google Scholar.

5 A selection of relevant work: Wade, Ira O., The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1938)Google Scholar; Darnton, Robert, “The High Enlightenment and the Low Life of Literature in Pre-revolutionary France,” Past and Present 51 (1971): 81–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darnton, Robert, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and the essays published in the French journal La lettre clandestine.

6 This theme has received special attention from German researchers under the heading “Volksaufklärung” (educating the people). See, among others, Böning, Holger, ed., Volksaufklärung. Eine praktische Reformbewegung des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Bremen: Ed. Lumière, 2007)Google Scholar; Tölle, Ursula, Rudolf Zacharias Becker. Versuche der Volksaufklärung in Deutschland (Münster: Waxmann, 1994)Google Scholar.

7 A selection: Stewart, Larry, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Golinski, Jan, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Hochadel, Oliver, Öffentliche Wissenschaft. Elektrizität in der deutschen Aufklärung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003)Google Scholar; Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette and Blondel, Christine, eds., Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar.

8 Stewart, Rise, XXXII.

9 In the foreground are writers such as Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Buffon. A selection of work on Linnaeus: Stafleu, Frans A., Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789 (Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1971)Google Scholar; Frängsmyr, Tore, ed., Linnaeus: The Man and His Work (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Müller-Wille, Staffan, Botanik und weltweiter Handel. Zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné, 1707–1778 (Berlin: VWB, 1999)Google Scholar. On Lamarck, see Daudin, Henri, Cuvier et Lamarck: Les classes zoologiques et l'idée de série animale, 1790–1830, 2 vols. (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1926)Google Scholar; Jordanova, Ludmilla, Lamarck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. On Buffon, see Barsanti, Giulio, “Linné et Buffon: Deux visions différentes de la nature et de l'histoire naturelle,” Revue de Synthèse, IIIe série, 113/114 (1984): 83–111Google Scholar; Roger, Jacques, Buffon: Un philosophe au Jardin du Roi (Paris: Fayard, 1989)Google Scholar; Hoquet, Thierry, Buffon: Histoire naturelle et philosophie (Paris: Champion, 2005)Google Scholar.

10 See, for example, Mayr, Ernst, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Stevens, Peter F., The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

11 Cf. Frängsmyr, Tore, Heilbron, J. L., and Rider, Robin E., eds., The Quantifying Spirit in the Enlightenment (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

12 Jardine, Nicholas, Secord, J. A. et al. , eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; cf. also Clark, William, Golinski, Jan, and Schaffer, Simon, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

13 Schiebinger, Londa and Swan, Claudia, eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pensylvania Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Inspired by postcolonial studies, a focus of interest has for some time been developing around these themes. See, for example, Miller, David P. and Reill, Peter H., eds., Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; MacLeod, Roy, ed., Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Drayton, Richard, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

14 Dauser, Regina and Hächler, Stefan, eds., Wissen im Netz. Botanik und Pflanzentransfer in europäischen Korrespondenznetzen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Cf. the following selection on innovative approaches: Müller-Wille, Staffan, “Carl von Linnés Herbarschrank. Zur epistemischen Funktion eines Sammlungsmöbels,” in Sammeln als Wissen. Das Sammeln und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung, ed. te Heesen, Anke and Spary, Emma C. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001), 22–38Google Scholar; Müller-Wille, Staffan, “Joining Lapland and the Topinambes in Flourishing Holland: Center and Periphery in Linnean Botany,” Science in Context 16, no. 4 (2003): 461–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Secord, Anne, “Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire,” History of Science 32 (1994): 269–315CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Secord, Anne, “Botany on a Plate: Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-Century Scientific Knowledge,” Isis 93, no. 1 (2002): 28–57CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

16 Cf. Findlen, Paula, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Spary, Emma C., Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chambers, Neil, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collecting 1770–1830 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007)Google Scholar.

17 Cf. Ogilvie, Brian, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, Harold, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Cf. Cooper, Alix, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. This is by no means intended to deny the significance of long-distance expeditions for natural history, but it will not be discussed again here.

19 Harkness, Deborah E., The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

20 A survey of the English-language literature on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific societies is provided by McClellan, James III, “Scientific Institutions and the Organization of Science,” in The Cambridge History of Science: Eighteenth-Century Science, ed. Porter, Roy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 87–106, 87–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hahn, Roger, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Roche, Daniel, Le siècle des Lumières en Province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789 (Paris: Mouton, 1989Google Scholar; original Paris: École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1978); Lowood, H. E., Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment: The Economic and Scientific Societies, 1760–1815 (New York: Garland, 1991)Google Scholar; Zaunstöck, Holger, Sozietätslandschaft und Mitgliederstrukturen. Die mitteldeutschen Aufklärungsgesellschaften im 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Döring, Detlef and Nowak, Kurt, eds., Gelehrte Gesellschaften im mitteldeutschen Raum, 1650–1820, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 2000–2)Google Scholar.

21 On this, see esp. Lowood, Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science; Vierhaus, Rudolf, ed., Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnützige Gesellschaften (Munich: Kraus, 1980)Google Scholar.

22 Cf. the Scholarly Societies Project of the University of Waterloo Library (Canada) that does justice to the European character of the association movement, at <http://www.scholarly-societies.org>; Lowood, Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science, 31 (table 2), 209 (table 17); and McClellan, James E., Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 6–7, 261–91Google Scholar. In particular, see Anke te Heesen, “Vom naturgeschichtlichen Investor zum Staatsdiener. Sammler und Sammlungen der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin um 1800,” in Sammeln als Wissen, ed. Heesen and Spary, 62–84; Zaunstöck, Holger, “Untersuchungen zur Struktur Naturforschender Gesellschaften im 18. Jahrhundert. Die Sozietäten in Halle, Leipzig und Jena,” in Naturwissenschaften um 1800. Beiträge zur Wissenschaftskultur in Weimar, ed. Breitbach, Olaf and Ziche, Paul (Weimar: Böhlau, 2001), 155–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ziche, Paul, “Die Jenaer Naturforschende Gesellschaft und ihre Bedeutung für die Naturforschung in Jena,” in Gelehrte Gesellschaften, ed. Döring, and Nowak, , vol. 2, 107–32Google Scholar. One of the first natural history societies whose foundation is attested to is the Società Botanica Fiorentina, established in Florence in 1716. In the German-language area, the Prüfende Gesellschaft zu Halle (1735) was followed by the Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Danzig (1743), and then the Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Zurich (1746).

23 A list of members organized by date of joining can be found in E. Schumann, “Geschichte der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Danzig, 1743–1892,” Schriften der naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Danzig, new series 8, no. 2 (1893): 75–112. Cf. Abhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich 1 (1761): 56. For an analysis of the memberships of the natural history societies in Halle, Leipzig, and Jena, cf. Zaunstöck, “Untersuchungen,” 155–78.

24 Cf. Zaunstöck, “Untersuchungen,” 160–2.

25 This approach dominates the German-language literature. See, for example, Zaunstöck, Sozietätslandschaft.

26 See McClellan, “Scientific Institutions”; and McClellan, Science Reorganized, 233–51.

27 “… vornämlich im gemeinschaftlichen Bestreben aller Mitglieder, die Erscheinungen und Merkwürdigkeiten der Natur, so viel in unserer Gewalt ist, genau zu erkennen, die Naturgeschichte in ihrem ganzen Umfange, besonders aber die Naturgeschichte unserer Lande, mit Beyhülfe einer guten Naturlehre, fleißig zu studieren und zum vorzüglichen Gegenstand ihrer Zusammenkünfte zu machen.” “Gesetze der hiesigen Privatgesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde nach den Verbesserungen vom 3ten May 1774,” Beschäftigungen der Berlinischen Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde 1 (1775): xxvii. On the chronology of the change in name, see <http//:www.scholarly-societies.org/history/1773bgnf.html>. Lowood uses the term “local science” in a different sense, namely, as the English translation of “Landeskunde”; see Lowood, Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science, 205–61.

28 On Zurich, see Abhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich 1 (1761): v. See, in addition, Rübel, Eduard, Geschichte der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich, 1746–1946 (Zurich: Fretz, 1947)Google Scholar. On Leipzig, see Nachricht von der am 31. Januar 1789 gestifteten naturforschenden Privatgesellschaft zu Leipzig (Leipzig: n.p., 1799), 30, 39. On Jena, see Steinmetz, Max, ed., Geschichte der Universität Jena, 1548–1958 (Jena: G. Fischer, 1958), 298Google Scholar (quote); and cf. Ziche, Paul, “Die Grenzen der Universität. Naturforschende, physikalische und mechanische Aktivitäten in Jena,” in Universität Jena. Tradition und Innovation um 1800, ed. Müller, Gerhard et al. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001), 221–37Google Scholar. The Société d'histoire naturelle grew out of the Société Linnéenne, founded in Paris in 1787; see Duris, Pascal, Linné et la France, 1780–1850 (Geneva: Droz, 1993), 69–87Google Scholar.

29 Bourguet, Marie-Noelle, “La collecte du monde: Voyage et histoire naturelle, fin XVIIe siècle-début XIXe siècle,” in Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire, ed. Blanckaert, Claude and Cohen, Claudine (Paris: Ed. du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1997), 163–96Google Scholar. Howgego, Raymond John provides an overview in Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800: A Comprehensive Reference Guide to the History and Literature of Exploration, Travel, and Colonization (Potts Point: Hordern House, 2003)Google Scholar. See also Schiebinger and Swan, eds., Colonial Botany.

30 Cf. Procès-verbaux de la Société d'Histoire Naturelle (Bibliothèque Centrale du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle Paris, manuscript 464).

31 Cf. “Gesetze der hiesigen Privatgesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde,” Beschäftigungen der Berlinischen Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde 1 (1775): xxvii.

32 “Herr Johann Fabri der ältere eröffnete die Session mit Vorlesung einer […] Abhandlung. […] Nach Vorlesung dieser Abhandlungen wurden Urteile darüber gefällt, und über diese disputiert. Hierauf wurde mit Examinierung des Insectencabinets der Anfang gemacht und man kam in der Klasse der Käfer bis zu […].” Archive of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina in Halle, 90/3/4 14r, “Die ersten Protokolle der Halleschen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft.”

33 Ibid., 90/3/4 39r.

34 “… diese vier Sessionen können bequem im Protokoll zusammengezogen werden, da wir uns größtenteils mit Bestimmung mancher Pflanzen und mit botanischen und mineralogischen Exkursionen beschäftigt haben.” Ibid., 90/3/4 43r.

35 Letter from Georg Friedrich Götz in Hanau (Hessen) to the NG Halle, July 18, 1783, ibid., 90/4/2.

36 Letter from Friedrich Wilhelm Siegfried in Berlin to the NG Halle, ibid.

37 Sensitized by postcolonial studies, the history of science has so far studied the periphery-center dynamic of natural history and the related question of the significance of local knowledge primarily in relation to collecting expeditions in non-European regions or within colonial settings. Cf. among others, Schiebinger and Swan, eds., Colonial Botany; De Vos, Paula Susan, “Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Spain,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 40, no. 2 (2007): 209–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Bruno Latour describes the focuses of data-collecting projects as centers of calculation, to which material collected at the periphery is delivered for processing. See Latour, Bruno, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 232–57Google Scholar.

39 On Haller's botanical activity, but with emphasis on different aspects, see Lienhard, Luc, “‘La machine botanique.’ Zur Entstehung von Hallers Flora der Schweiz,” in Hallers Netz. Ein europäischer Gelehrtenbriefwechsel zur Zeit der Aufklärung, ed. Stuber, Martin and Hächler, Stefan (Basel: Schwabe, 2005), 371–410Google Scholar. Haller's Herbarium is held by the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque centrale du Muséum d'histoire naturelle in Paris.

40 Boschung, Urs, Johannes Gessner, 1709–1790. Der Gründer der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich (Zurich: Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, 1996)Google Scholar.

41 Mainly Swiss doctors, including Jean-Jacques Châtelain, Johann Jakob Dick, Johann Caspar Füssli, Abraham Gagnebin, Johannes Hofer, Johann Jacob Huber, Werner La Chenal, Achilles Mieg, and Jacob Christoph Ramspeck. Information on this circle can be found in de Beer, G. R., “Haller's Historia Stirpium,” Annals of Science 9 (1953): 1–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boschung, Urs, Braun-Bucher, Barbara et al. , eds., Repertorium zu Albert von Hallers Korrespondenz, 1724–1777, 2 vols. (Basel: Schwabe, 2002)Google Scholar.

42 Specimen inaugurale observationum botanicorum, quod […] publice defendit Wernerus de La Chenal (Basel, 1759).

43 Letter, Albrecht von Haller to Werner de La Chenal, April 21, 1759, printed in Christ, Hermann, “Der Briefwechsel der Basler Botaniker des 18. Jahrhunderts Achilles Mieg, Werner de La Chenal und Jakob Christoph Ramspeck mit Albrecht von Haller,” Verhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Basel 29 (1918): 1–59, 33Google Scholar (my own translation of the Latin original).

44 Cf. letter, Albrecht von Haller to Werner de La Chenal, September 14, 1759, ibid., 37.

45 Letter, Albrecht von Haller to Werner de La Chenal, May 25, 1760, ibid., 41 (my own translation of the Latin original).

46 Letter, Werner de La Chenal to Albrecht von Haller, July 21, 1760, ibid., 42f. After his return, a precise balance was drawn up. Cf. letter, Werner de La Chenal to Albrecht von Haller, August 13, 1760, ibid., 44. Letter, Albrecht von Haller to Werner de La Chenal, August 20, 1760, ibid.

47 Cf. the Linnaean correspondence, an electronic presentation edited by the Swedish Linnaeus Society, Uppsala, and the Centre international d'étude du XVIII siècle, Ferney-Voltaire <http://linnaeus.c18.net>. For Haller's correspondence—ca.13,300 letters from 1,200 addressees—reference is again made to Boschung, Braun-Bucher et al., eds., Repertorium; Stuber and Hächler, eds., Hallers Netz. Cf. de Buffon, Henri Nadault, ed., La correspondance de Buffon, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1971)Google Scholar. Cf. the new edition of Banks's correspondence: Chambers, Neil, ed., The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 6 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007)Google Scholar.

48 [Christian Gottlieb Ludwig], De vegetatione plantarum marinarum […]: Disserent praeses Christianus Gottlieb Ludwig respondens Michael Morgenbesser (Leipzig, 1736). Letter, Christian Gottlieb Ludwig to Linnaeus, December 10, 1736, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/Texts>, L0121 (my own translation of the Latin original).

49 Letter, Christian Gottlieb Ludwig to Linnaeus, January 14, 1737, <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/Texts>, L0135 (my own translation of the Latin original).

50 Allioni, Carlo, Flora Pedemontana Sive Enumeratio Methodica Stirpium Indigenarum Pedemontii, 3 vols. (Turin: Briolus, 1785)Google Scholar.

51 See, for example, the letters from Carlo Allioni to Carolus Linnaeus, August 13, 1757, and April 17, 1761, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/Texts>, L3898, L2901.

52 See the letters from Ferdinando Bassi to Carolus Linnaeus, December 13, 1767, and April 26, 1771, ibid., L4012, L4598.

53 See the letter from Johann Albrecht Gesner to Carolus Linnaeus, March 26, 1743, ibid., L0487.

54 See the letter from Franz Ernst Brückmann to Carolus Linnaeus, September 18, 1737, ibid., L0199.

55 Johann Friedrich Bauder, Relation des fossiles découverts depuis quelques années dans les environs d'Altdorf (Altdorf, 1772). See the letter from Johann Friedrich Bauder to Carolus Linnaeus, July 10, 1773, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/Texts>, L4703. No answer from Linnaeus is recorded here. In addition, four letters from the German merchant and botanist Johann Christian Cuno are documented; <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/Texts>, L1415, L1550, L1603, L1986.

56 See the letter from Anna Blackburne to Carolus Linnaeus, October 14, 1771, <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/Texts>, L4561.

57 See the letters from Christian Ludwig Krause to Carolus Linnaeus from the years 1748–1769, ibid.

58 Caroli Linnaei, […] biliotheca botanica recensens libros plus mille de plantis huc usque editos (Amsterdam, 1736). Letter, Christian Gottlieb Ludwig to Linnaeus, January 14, 1737, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/texts>, L0135. What remains unclear is which text is meant: Carl von Linné, Systema naturae, sive, regna tria naturae systematice proposita per classes, ordines, genera & species (Leiden: de Groot, 1735); or Caroli Linnaei Sveci Methodus juxta quam physiologus accurate & feliciter concinnare potest historiam cujuscumque naturalis subjecti, sequentibus hisce paragraphis comprehensa (Leiden, 1736); or both. The second through the ninth editions (1740–56) of Systema naturae contained the Methodus as Methodus demonstrandi animalia, vegetabilia aut lapides. Cf. Soulsby, Basil H., A Catalogue of the Works of Linnaeus, and publications more immediately relating thereto, preserved in the Libraries of the British Museum, 2nd ed. (London: British Museum, 1933)Google Scholar, no. 40.

59 C. G. Ludwig to Linnaeus, January 14, 1737, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/texts>, L0135 (my own translation of the Latin original).

60 [Anton Wilhelm Platz], Historiam radicum exponit […] Antonius Guilelmus Plazius (Leipzig, 1733); Anton Wilhelm Platz, De plantarum seminibus, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1736–7). Letter, C. G. Ludwig to Linnaeus, October 22, 1737, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/texts>, L0210.

61 von Linné, Carl, Flora Lapponica exhibens plantas per Lapponiam crescentes, secundum systema sexuale collectas in itinere impensis Soc. Reg. Litt. et Scient. Sveciae a. 1731 instituto (Amsterdam: Salomon Schouten, 1737)Google Scholar. Letter, Franz Ernst Brückmann to Carolus Linnaeus, May 4, 1742, in <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/texts>, L0463.

62 Letter, Franz Ernst Brückmann to Carolus Linnaeus, January 23, 1738, <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/texts>, L0231.

63 Cf. the letters from Carl August von Bergen to Carolus Linnaeus, June 24, 1743, ibid., L0493; and March 16, 1747, ibid., L0790.

64 On the basic work on the culture of gift exchange, see Mauss, Marcel, “Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques,” L'Année Sociologique 1923–1924, no. 1: 30–186Google Scholar. See also Müller-Wille, Staffan, “Nature as a Marketplace: The Political Economy of Linnean Botany,” History of Political Economy, Suppl. 35 (2003): 155–173Google Scholar.

65 Letter, Carl von Linné to Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin, October 16, 1764, in Caroli Linnaei epistolae ad Nicolaum Josephum Jacquin, ex autographis edidit C. N. J.eques a Schreibers (Vienna, 1841), 79–81.

66 For a selection of literature on this topic, see Scott, Hamish, ed., Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sandl, Marcus, Ökonomie des Raumes. Der kameralwissenschaftliche Entwurf der Staatswirtschaft im 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne et al.: Böhlau, 1999)Google Scholar; Garner, Guillaume, État, économie et territoire en Allemagne: L'espace dans le caméralisme et l'économie politique (Paris: Ed. de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2006)Google Scholar.

67 On this, see esp. Koerner, Lisbet, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; cf. also Drayton, Nature's Government; Spary, Utopia's Garden.

68 Sieffert, Ambrosius Michael, Versuche mit einheimischen Färbematerien zum Nutzen der Färberey (Altenburg: Richter, 1775)Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., 8.

70 Article “Das Färben,” in Krünitz, Johann Georg, Oekonomisch-technologische Enzyklopädie, 242 vols. (Berlin: Pauli, 1773–1858)Google Scholar, vol. 12 (1777), 56.

71 Nicolaus Kulenkamp's prize-winning essay of 1767, published in Hannöverisches Magazin 39 (1773): 609–620. See also Kulenkamp, Nicolaus, “Vom Baue des Seeländischen Krappe, und wie diese Pflanze in den zunächst an der See gelegenen Gegenden mit Nutzen gebauet werden könne,” Hannöverische nützliche Sammlungen 3 (1757): 17–37Google Scholar (prize-winning essay of 1756); and Kulenkamp, Nicolaus,“Die Art und Weise aus dem Waid eine dem Indigo nahe kommende Pflanze zuzubereiten,” Hannöverische nützliche Sammlungen 14 (1758): 209–217Google Scholar (prize-winning essay of 1757).

72 Pörner, Carl Wilhelm, Chymische Versuche und Bemerkungen zum Nutzen der Färbekunst (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1772), 2Google Scholar.

73 “Versuche über einige Benutzungen der Rosskastanie,” published in Bemerkungen der kurpfälzischen physikalisch-ökonomischen Gesellschaft (1780). “Vorschläge von Erfindung neuer Farbstoffe,” published in Monatliche Beyträge zur Naturkunde 5 (1752): 364–69.

74 Suckow, Georg Adolph, Oekonomische Botanik, zum Gebrauch der Vorlesungen auf der hohen Kameralschule zu Lautern (Mannheim: Schwan, 1777)Google Scholar.

75 Cf. ibid., 373.

76 Ibid., 358f.

77 Ibid., 382.

78 See Schwarz, Johann, “Geschichte der k.k. Theresianischen Akademie von ihrer Gründung bis zum Curatorium Sr. Exzellenz Anton Ritter von Schmerling, 1746–1865,” Jahres-Bericht über das Gymnasium der k.k. Theresianischen Akademie in Wien für das Schuljahr 1890 (Vienna, 1890): 3–110Google Scholar.

79 Kaiserlich-königliche privilegierte Realzeitung der Wissenschaften, Künste und Kommerzien (1775, no volume numbers): 536–541, 549–552, 564–566, 580–581, 628–629, including a plan.