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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2019
In 1732, the London Society of Apothecaries joined the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America in a scheme to establish an experimental garden in the nascent colony. This garden was designed to benefit the trustees’ bottom line, as well as to provide much-needed drugs to British apothecaries at a time of increasing overseas warfare and the mortality it entailed. The effort to grow medicinal plants in Georgia drew together a group of partners who began to recognize the economic potential of botany, and of medicinal plants specifically, in calculations of political economy. The plan depended on the knowledge production occurring at the apothecaries’ Chelsea Physic Garden and their efforts to adapt to a changing medicine trade by finding customers among state-sponsored institutions. Taken together, the histories of the gardens at Chelsea and Savannah illustrate that a perceived need for medicines brought plants into expressions of state power long before the network of botanical stations emblematic of the nineteenth-century empire. This earlier transatlantic story pairs the commercialization of health-care provision with shifts in imperial policy in the long eighteenth century.
1 John Pine, [Trustee's Garden Depiction,] 1732, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries. On Pine's career, see Susan Sloman, s.v., “Pine, John (1690–1756),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22293; Coleman, Kenneth, Colonial Georgia: A History (New York, 1976), 17Google Scholar.
2 For example, see Martyn, Benjamin, Reasons for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, With Regard to the Trade of Great Britain (London, 1733), 4–5Google Scholar; Martyn, Benjamin, An Impartial Inquiry into the State and Utility of the Province of Georgia (London, 1741), 13Google Scholar.
3 On 20 July 1732, three months after their charter had been signed by King George II, the trustees organized themselves as a corporate body to oversee the colony's economy and began to solicit funding. According to Georgia's charter, no trustee could own land, hold office, or gain any income from the new colony. Trustees also would not receive dividends from anticipated profits, so the colony would have to be funded through charitable donations until it became self-sufficient. The fund for “Encouraging and Improving Agriculture” soon attracted subscriptions from a number of high-ranking aristocrats and powerful men, including Charles DuBois (treasurer of the East India Company), Charles Lennox (the second Duke of Richmond), Sir Hans Sloane (president of the Royal Society), James Stanley (the tenth Earl of Derby), and George Heathcote (a director of the South Sea Company), who saw the economic and political potential of the colony's ecology. Ready, Milton, “The Georgia Concept: An Eighteenth Century Experiment in Colonization,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 55, no. 2 (Summer 1971): 157–72Google Scholar, at 164–66; Coleman, Colonial Georgia, 17–18, 112; Allen D. Candler et al., eds., Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, 39 vols. to date (Atlanta, 1904–), 1:72, 217, 260.
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16 Efforts have been made to rehabilitate the trustees’ plan from its depiction as a fanciful failure, as well as to better situate the Georgia colony within its colonial, indigenous, and Enlightenment contexts. See Spalding, Phinzy, Oglethorpe in America (Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar; Spalding, Phinzy and Jackson, Harvey H., eds., Oglethorpe in Perspective: Georgia's Founder after Two Hundred Years (Tuscaloosa, 1989)Google Scholar; Wilson, Thomas D., The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond (Charlottesville, 2012)Google Scholar; McIlvenna, Noeleen, The Short Life of Free Georgia: Class and Slavery in the Colonial South (Chapel Hill, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet the colony's first nineteen years under the trustees’ charter is often elided or described as an economic backwater before the arrival of plantation agriculture; for example, see Pressly, Paul M., On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (Athens, 2013)Google Scholar.
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26 On the need for raw materials, see Wallis, “Exotic Drugs”; Receipt Book, 1783–1785, MS 8258, SA.
27 For this background, see Cook, Harold J., “The Rose Case Reconsidered: Physicians, Apothecaries, and the Law in Augustan England,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45, no. 4 (October 1990): 527–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 550; Cook, Harold J., The Decline of the Old Medical Regime in Stuart London (Ithaca, 1986)Google Scholar; Pelling, Margaret, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners, 1550–1640 (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar.
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30 The case against William Rose, a liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries, did not in itself shift the practice of medicine in London but rather confirmed the new organization of a medical marketplace rife with physicians, apothecaries, chemists, druggists, and many others. Cook, “Rose Case Reconsidered,” 527–28. For a discussion of the term “medical marketplace,” see Jenner, Mark S. R. and Wallis, Patrick, “The Medical Marketplace,” in Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c. 1450–c. 1850, ed. Jenner, and Wallis, (Basingstoke, 2007), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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33 Hazel Le Rougetel, s.v., “Miller, Philip (1691–1771),” ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18734. For a sense of the medicinal plants at Chelsea, see Miller's Gardeners Dictionary, which discussed domestic and foreign plants growing at the garden and went through numerous editions as a result of its popularity. For example, Miller noted the difficulties of growing American sassafras on English soil and announced the virtues of Virginia snakeroot based on his experiences at Chelsea. Philip Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary. Containing the Methods of Cultivating and Improving All Sorts of Trees, Plants, and Flowers […] , 4th corrected and enlarged ed., vol. 3 (London, 1754).
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37 Garden Committee Minute Book, 1769–1788, 115–20, 165–66, 210–12, 232, 234, MS 8228/2, SA.
38 Garden Committee Minute Book, 5 January 1731, 1–3, 7, MS 8228/1, SA.
39 Garden Order Book, 1771–1829, 1–2, MS 8236, SA.
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47 Articles of Copartnership of the Navy Stock, 3 August 1703, box 64/10, SA; Case laid before Counsel by the General Committee of the Navy Stock in the Month of March 1767 and of the Opinions of Counsel thereon, 1767, box 64/10, SA. Simmons, Anna, “Stills, Status, Stocks and Science: The Laboratories at Apothecaries’ Hall in the Nineteenth Century,” Ambix 61, no. 2 (May 2014): 141–61CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at 155; Hunting, Society of Apothecaries, 164–70.
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60 Holland, “Public Agricultural Experimentation,” 276.
61 Chaplin, Anxious Pursuit, 10–12.
62 Holland, “Public Agricultural Experimentation,” 271–72.
63 Candler, Colonial Records 3:181; 1:223. There is a rich historiography on the allure of silk cultivation for those with economic ambitions in the Atlantic world. Ewan, Joseph, “Silk Culture in the Colonies,” Agricultural History 41, no. 1 (January 1969): 129–42Google Scholar; Stephens, Pauline Tyson, “The Silk Industry in Georgia,” Georgia Review 7, no. 1 (Spring 1953): 39–49Google Scholar; Bonner, James C., “Silk Growing in the Georgia Colony,” Agricultural History 43, no. 1 (January 1969): 143–48Google Scholar; Marsh, Ben, “Silk Hopes in Colonial South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 78, no. 4 (November 2012): 807–54Google Scholar.
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68 Cook, “Markets and Cultures,” 140; Cowen, David L., “The British North American Colonies as a Source of Drugs,” in Vierzig Jahre (Internationale) Gesellschaft Fur Geschichte Der Pharmazie, ed. Dann, Georg Edmund (Stuttgart, 1966), 47–59Google Scholar, at 49–50.
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70 Murphy, “Collecting Slave Traders,” 663–64.
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72 Ewan, “Silk Culture in the Colonies,” 135; Johnston, Houstouns of Georgia, 9–16; Candler, Colonial Records 2:5–6, 59–61. For details of the South Sea Company's trade under the asiento, see Wennerlind, Carl, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620–1720 (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sperling, John G., The South Sea Company: An Historical Essay and Bibliographical Finding List (Boston, 1962)Google Scholar; Palmer, Colin A., Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700–1739 (Urbana, 1981)Google Scholar; Murphy, “Collecting Slave Traders,” 660–61; Brown, Vera Lee, “The South Sea Company and Contraband Trade,” American Historical Review 31, no. 4 (July 1926): 662–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, George H., “Contraband Trade under the Asiento, 1730–1739,” American Historical Review 51, no. 1 (October 1945): 55–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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80 Holland, “Public Agricultural Experimentation,” 274–76.
81 A new voyage to Georgia: By a young gentleman […], 2nd ed. (London, 1737), 40–41; An Extract from the Journal of Mr. Commissary Von Reck and of the Rev. Mr. Bolzius […] (London, 1734), 12–15; Candler, Colonial Records 3:86, 382.
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88 Holland, “Public Agricultural Experimentation,” 290. The case was taken to trial, but was dismissed as the jury did not believe the allegations against the attackers.
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90 For example, see Tailfer, Anderson, and Douglas, True and Historical Narrative, 29, 66, 30; Potter, David M. Jr., “The Rise of the Plantation System in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 16, no. 2 (June 1932): 114–35Google Scholar, at 114.
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94 Candler, Colonial Records 3:59–60; 21:346.
95 Holland, “Public Agricultural Experimentation,” 291–92.
96 Taylor, American Colonies, 243; McIlvenna, Free Georgia, chap. 6.
97 Candler, Colonial Records 2:338; Holland, “Public Agricultural Experimentation,” 293–94, 296–97. On the site's more recent history and redevelopment, see Bill Dawers, “Hotels, Stores and Condos May Sprout at Trustees,” Savannah Morning News, 15 July 2001, 2D; Gail Krueger, “Historic Building Collapse,” Savannah Morning News, 1 September 2001, 1A; Gail Krueger, “How the Garden Grows,” Savannah Morning News, 16 September 2001, 10D; Mary Landers, “Trustees’ Garden: Site Cleanup Resumes,” Savannah Morning News, 22 August 2002, 1C; Mary Landers, “Trustees’ Garden Sprouts Again,” Savannah Morning News, 5 June 2008, C1; “Vision Comes to Life at Trustees’ Garden Site,” Savannah Morning News, 10 April 2018, A10.
98 Other examples include Drayton, Nature's Government; Grove, Green Imperialism; Desmond, Ray, Kew: The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens (London, 1995)Google Scholar; Arnold, “Plant Capitalism”; Schiebinger, Plants and Empire. On current thinking regarding the continued use of distinctions between center and periphery, see also Parrish, Susan Scott, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, 2006)Google Scholar.
99 Arnold, “Plant Capitalism,” 911. In general, this was a time when science became detached from its old patrons, the churches and courts, and attached to the institutions of mercantile capitalism, the state, and trading companies; see Sörlin, “Ordering the World,” 69.
100 Gascoigne, Joseph Banks, 76.
101 Charters, Welfare of the British Armed Forces, 3–6, 153, 174.
102 The National Archives, CUST 3; Navy Stock Accounts, MS 8225, SA. The plantation complex constituted perhaps the principal destination for British medicines during this period; see Dorner, “Manufacturing Pharmaceuticals,” chap. 4.
103 Many companies tried to force practitioners back into their membership in this period. See Berlin, Michael, “Guilds in Decline? London Livery Companies and the Rise of a Liberal Economy, 1600–1800,” in Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1400–1800, ed. Epstein, S. R. and Prak, Maarten (Cambridge, 2008), 316–41Google Scholar.
104 Copy of a paper delivered the Earl of Macclesfield, 1753, M5, SA. On its early membership and legal status, see Hunting, Society of Apothecaries, chap. 1; Barrett, C. R. B., The History of the Society of Apothecaries of London (London, 1905), xix–xxxixGoogle Scholar, chap. 1.
105 List of Money Paid to Support the Chelsea Physic Garden, 20 March 1753, M5, SA; List of Benefactors to the Society, 1621–1759, box 39/4, SA; John Haynes, The Physic Garden, Chelsea: a plain view, 1751, L0047939, Wellcome Library London.
106 Kalm, Visit to England, 111.
107 Copy of a paper delivered the Earl of Macclesfield, 1753, M5, SA. Parker had served in parliament in the 1720s, and in 1752 was elected president of the Royal Society. A. M. Clerke, s.v., “Parker, George, second earl of Macclesfield (c.1697–1764),” ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21299.
108 Crawford, Andean Wonder Drug, 67. Recent scholarship has emphasized the social embeddedness of scientific practice, as well as the frameworks of patronage systems, state power, and categories of difference that shaped the daily activities of natural history. See Sörlin, “Ordering the World,” 53–54.
109 Navy Stock Accounts, MS 8225, SA; Hunting, Society of Apothecaries, 174.
110 Bengal General Letter, 21 November 1766, IOR/E/4/618, fols. 467–68, British Library; Fort William to Court, 28 November 1766, in C. S. Srinivasachari, ed., Fort William-India House Correspondence, vol. 4 (Delhi, 1962), 444.
111 John Raithby, ed., “An Act for encouraging the Cultivation, and for the better Preservation of Trees, Roots, Plants and Shrubs, 6 Geo. 3, c. 36,” The Statutes at Large of England and of Great-Britain, vol. 12, From 1 George III AD 1760 to 7 George III AD 1767 (London, 1811), 533–34; Wulf, Andrea, The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession (London, 2009), 136–37Google Scholar, 166.
112 Garden Committee Minute Book, 1769–1788, 30 November 1770, 84–85, MS 8228/2, SA.
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118 Argo Roersch van der Hoogte and Toine Pieters, “Science in the Service of Colonial Agro-Industrialism: The Case of Cinchona Cultivation in the Dutch and British East Indies, 1852–1900,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47, part A (September 2014): 12–22; Goss, Andrew, The Floracrats: State-Sponsored Science and the Failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia (Madison, 2011)Google Scholar; Drayton, Nature's Government, 207–20; McCracken, Donal P., Gardens of Empire: Botanical Institutions of the Victorian British Empire (London, 1997)Google Scholar, chap. 3.
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120 The first garden at Kew was founded in 1759 to house the royal plant collection. By the Victorian era, it had shifted from a pleasure garden to a research center staffed by professional botanists. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion, 3–5, 7; Mackay, David, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire, 1780–1801 (New York, 1985), 193Google Scholar; Drayton, Nature's Government, 48–49, 106, 116–17. On the further development of Kew, see Endersby, Jim, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (Chicago, 2008)Google Scholar.
121 Charters, Welfare of the British Armed Forces, 16; Chakrabarti, Materials and Medicine, 64, 76.
122 Carman, Harry J., ed., American Husbandry, 1775 (Port Washington, 1964), 193–94Google Scholar, 196–97.
123 This was not the case initially as cotton seeds play no special role in quintessential nineteenth-century accounts of the garden. Faulkner, Thomas, An Historical and Topographical Description of Chelsea and Its Environs (London, 1810), 22Google Scholar; Field, Henry, Memoirs, Historical and Illustrative, of the Botanick Garden at Chelsea (London, 1802)Google Scholar; Blunt, Reginald, Paradise Row or a Broken Piece of Old Chelsea (London, 1906)Google Scholar.
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