The plants’ routes

informal and self-organised knowledge production and circulation networks in the Portuguese maritime Empire

Abstract

From the 1680s until the end of the eighteenth century, the Portuguese imperial authorities increasingly focused on the South Atlantic and West Africa. However, this did not mean the end of the circulation networks through which people, goods and knowledge circulated and which, since the mid-sixteenth century, had connected Europe, America, Africa and Asia. Reconfigured and with a new gravitational centre, these networks promoted the circulation of knowledge produced about the natural world. Due to the great biotic variability of the imperial possessions, there was great interest on the part of colonial agents in the virtually inexhaustible botanical diversity and its great economic potential. Produced by a great diversity of agents, this knowledge circulated through the complex networks, formal and informal, that constituted the imperial communication channels. This article seeks to understand these mechanisms of production and circulation of knowledge about plants, based on the action of individuals, both within informal and self-organised networks and within official institutions, be they religious, political, military or academic. In this sense, our main starting questions are: how were these networks formed? To what social, geographical, cultural, political and epistemological contexts were they related? What was their role in the circulation and production of knowledge? To answer them, we will analyse the trajectories of several historical agents who formed them, the type of knowledge they produced, and how they were articulated with imperial institutions.