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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Plant Knowledge at the Cape: A Study in African and European Collaboration |
| Author: | Musselman, Elizabeth Green |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
| Volume: | 36 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 367-392 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | South Africa The Cape |
| Subjects: | botany plants Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Health and Nutrition |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3559388 |
| Abstract: | The more tenuous nature of the sciences and of colonialism before about 1850 opened a space in the Cape Colony (South Africa) for a more explicitly acknowleged interaction between European and African natural knowledge. Europeans had not yet colonized the whole of southern Africa and so relied more clearly on African informants to help them understand the natural environment within and beyond the colony's borders. Moreover, European naturalists before the mid-1800s typically shared with Cape liberals an optimism that they could 'civilize' southern Africans, and thus naturalists paid more attention at this stage to Africans' intellectual capacity and potential. The article focuses on how African and Europeans shared knowledge about plants. It considers the mutual influence of African and settler farming practices and the importance of cultivation to Cape elites; the related importance of African natural knowledge to European botanical expeditions; and the reasons why, from the middle of the nineteenth century, South African naturalists of European ancestry stopped acknowledging the centrality of African natural knowledge for their craft. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
