Nature in Translation: Transferring Botanical Knowledge in the Early Modern Caribbean (1550-1750) 

My paper will explore the translation of botanical knowledge on paper, in the context of colonial botany as it was performed by European actors in the New World ca. 1550-1700. I focus on the practices of draughtsmanship and printmaking in the works of a few early modern naturalists and image-makers such as Charles Plumier (1646-1704). The latter was a French cleric but also a trained botanist, later also appointed “King’s botanist” or botaniste du roi. Plumier was sent to the French Antilles on different occasions, and he described and depicted in drawings hundreds of local plants. Through this case study and some other examples, I examine early modern discourses on botanical image-making and analyze some of the drawing methodologies and visual strategies at play in the pictorial productions of early modern naturalists. These practices, as I will argue, involve mechanisms of translation, from an observational event into a graphic act, where translation is performed on two levels: first on the microscale of sketching what is visible in the observed plants, a practice which is akin to visual note-taking, and then on the macroscale of a published inventory or a lavishly produced album of botanical images. Translation from observation to graphics could be carried by the same person, who unusually sought to maintain the whole chain of image production under his/her control, to avoid any possible mistake in the transfer process. In some cases part of a series of efforts in state-sponsored publishing, the graphic act of stabilizing botanical knowledge in drawings and prints also pushes the functional boundaries of paper objects, which offered material means of claiming ownership over new natural and valuable resources by “harnessing” them graphically and textually.