July 26, 2018, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium In the 18th century, European empires sought to discover and cultivate spices, medicinal plants, and other cash crops. The British government turned to colonial botanic gardens to help develop agriculture and explore the plant life of its imperial possessions. This talk explores the triumphs and tribulations of people working in botanic gardens in India, Australia, and the Caribbean, as they navigated diverse social, political, and environmental landscapes to pursue botany in the service of empire. The speaker: J’Nese Williams is a doctoral candidate studying the History of Science and Modern British History at Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation, “The Texture of Empire: British Colonial Botanic Gardens, Science, and Colonial Administration,” uses local activities of the British colonial gardens as a window into the operation of empire and government support of science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. J’Nese is interested in the ways that the gardens responded to the needs of their local communities and the impact of these local programs on the perceived success or failure of individual gardens. Her dissertation also looks closely at botanic garden workers, including individuals of low social status, enslaved and free, whose botanical expertise led to recognition for themselves and for the gardens as scientific institutions. J’Nese will spend the 2017-2018 year in residence as a fellow at the Humanities Institute at the New York Botanical Garden and the Linda Hall Library. She earned a BA in history at Princeton University.

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