A science of empire:
British biogeography
before Darwin
With its emphasis on the regions or "nations" of plants and animals, its concern with the discovery and utilisation of species "useful" to the homeland, its written surveys of the living beings of different countries, and the administrative network of colonial botanic gardens, timber forests, tea plantations, museums, farms, and menageries that served both centre and periphery, biogeography in Britain was one of the most obviously imperial sciences in an age of increasing imperialism (1). It fully reflected the growth of
(1) See particularly, С A. Bayly, Imperial meridian: the British empire and the world, 1730-1830 (London and New York: Longman, 1989); A. P. Thornton, The imperial idea and its enemies: a study in British power (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1985) ; Woodruff D. Smith, European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982) ; David Kenneth, The colonial empires: a comparative survey from the eighteenth century (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1982); and Colin C. Eldridge (éd.), British imperialism in the nineteenth century (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1984). Rev. Hist. Sci., 1992, XLV/4
