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SIR JOSEPH BANKS'S PROVINCIAL TURN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2017

JULIAN HOPPIT*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London, wc1e 6btj.hoppit@ucl.ac.uk

Abstract

The rise of global history has been a major development in historical studies in recent years, with the history of globalization a central part of that. But did the global matter as much to people in the past as to historians now? This article addresses that question with reference to Britain as viewed through some neglected aspects of the life of the botanist Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820). He is usually remembered for his extensive global preoccupations. Yet his ability to be a citizen of the world, most famously on Cook's first voyage of exploration, rested on his considerable landed wealth. Indeed, as the years passed, he became more interested in improving both his own estates and the wider region, especially his beloved county of Lincolnshire in England. There, global pressures exerted some indirect influences, but local ones, especially environmental and legal, remained more important, often addressed by resort to parliamentary legislation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

I am very grateful to Margot Finn and Renaud Morieux for commenting on a draft of this article.

References

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22 In the 1760s, Joseph Massie estimated that there were 310 families in England with an income of at least £4,000 per annum. Bank's income from his core estate was £5,500 in the 1790s, though because of inflation this would have been a bit less at inheritance. Massie put a country labourer's annual income at £12.50. Mathias, Peter, The transformation of England: essays in the economic and social history of England in the eighteenth century (London, 1979), p. 186Google Scholar; Carter, Banks, p. 324.

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34 Lincolnshire Archive Office, CO C2/2, minutes of county meetings, 1792–1823. The pamphlet was [Joseph Banks], Outlines of a plan of defence against a French invasion; intended for the county of Lincoln; but applicable to all other counties (1794).

35 Young, Arthur, General view of the agriculture of Lincolnshire (2nd edn, 1813), pp. 22–3Google Scholar: at Revesby, Banks's office ‘has 156 drawers…all numbered. There is a catalogue of names and subjects, and a list of every paper in every drawer; so that whether the inquiry concerned a man, or a drainage, or an enclosure, or a farm, or a wood, the request was scarcely named before a mass of information was in a moment before me.’

36 Eleanor, and Russell, Rex C., Old and new landscapes in the Horncastle area (Lincoln, 1985), pp. 4951Google Scholar, 69, 71–4, 76, 85–6. Parliamentary enclosure began to be common in the 1760s.

37 On Banks's political independence, see Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, pp. 47–52.

38 Discussed in Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, pp. 71–81. For the history of the wool export ban see Hoppit, Julian, Britain's political economies, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2017), ch. 7Google Scholar.

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46 Ibid., pp. 102–55.

47 California State Library, Sutro Library, San Francisco, Banks papers (hereafter Sutro, Banks), WL2, 88–90.

48 Carter, Banks, pp. 236–7.

49 Carter, ed., The sheep and wool correspondence, p. 62.

50 Bouyer, R. G., ed., An account of the origin, proceedings, and intentions of the Society for the Promotion of Industry, in the southern district of the parts of Lindsey, in the county of Lincoln (3rd edn, Louth, 1789)Google Scholar, pp. 23 and 35.

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52 The best study remains Darby, H. C., The draining of the fens (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1956)Google Scholar. See also Wheeler, W. H., A history of fens of south Lincolnshire (2nd edn, London, 1897)Google Scholar.

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62 Ibid., F3:70, 76.

63 Ibid., F8:19; F4:39.

64 [Maxwell], A statement of facts. Banks described the pamphlet as ‘little more than a gross attack on me’. Sutro, Banks, F5:74. The controversy had a structural as well as a personal element to it, surviving Maxwell's death in 1815: ibid., F2:18. Maxwell was separately attacked by the Reverend James Ashley who published seven ‘letters’ against him from 1797 to 1802. Maxwell replied anonymously to the first in The law-priest; or, quibus dissected. In a series of letters to a friend (Spalding, 1797).

65 H. B. Carter and Christopher Sturman, ‘Sir Joseph Banks as a writer of topical verse’, in Sturman, ed., Lincolnshire people, pp. 108–9.

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70 Discussed by Farnsworth, ‘Revesby Abbey’, ch. 6.

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87 BL, Add. MSS 52,281, fo. 27. This is a letter from Cartwright to Banks about breaking off relations.

88 Sutro, Banks, F8:27, F7:18.

89 Ibid., F3:43.

90 Ibid., F5:32, F7:44.

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