The German Network around the Danish Botanist and Superintendent of the Botanical Garden in Calcutta, Nathaniel Wallich (1786–1854)

This is a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of the 2019 MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con entry “Das deutsche Net­zw­erk rund um den dӓnis­chen Botaniker und Super­in­ten­den­ten des Botanis­chen Gartens von Kalkut­ta Nathaniel Wal­lich (1786–1854)”. The text was trans­lat­ed by Rekha Rajan.

Table of Con­tents
Ger­mans in the Colonies | The Ger­man-speak­ing World | Archives and Hold­ings | Pub­lished Sources | Sec­ondary Literature

Nathaniel Wal­lich came from a Ger­man-Jew­ish fam­i­ly and stud­ied med­i­cine and botany in Copen­hagen. In 1807, he left for Ser­am­pore near Cal­cut­ta in order to work as a doc­tor for the Dan­ish trad­ing com­pa­ny. When, the Dan­ish town of Ser­am­pore was occu­pied by the British short­ly there­after dur­ing the Napoleon­ic Wars, Wal­lich was at first impris­oned. As a doc­tor, how­ev­er, he was in demand in the colonies, espe­cial­ly among the Euro­peans, and he quick­ly estab­lished con­tact with influ­en­tial peo­ple like the mem­bers of the Asi­at­ic Soci­ety, the British Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies William Carey and William Ward in Ser­am­pore, or the direc­tor of the Botan­i­cal Gar­den in Cal­cut­ta, William Rox­burgh. His strong inter­est in botany was also help­ful in estab­lish­ing these con­tacts. Final­ly, it was both these aspects which helped to make him super­in­ten­dent of the Botan­i­cal Gar­den in Cal­cut­ta in 1817. Over the fol­low­ing decades Wal­lich organ­ised sev­er­al research and recre­ation­al jour­neys, for exam­ple to Nepal and Assam, to Sin­ga­pore, to the Cape Colony and to Mau­ri­tius. Mean­while, his cor­re­spon­dence net­work became increas­ing­ly glob­al, spo­rad­i­cal­ly extend­ing to the USA, Brazil and Aus­tralia (Krieger 2014, 2017a, Har­ri­son 2011, Arnold 2008).

From 1828 to 1832 Wal­lich stayed in Europe and, with the per­mis­sion of his employ­er the EIC, he dis­trib­uted the plant col­lec­tions and dupli­cates he had brought from India for eval­u­a­tion by inter­na­tion­al experts for each of the rel­e­vant fam­i­lies of plants. He coor­di­nat­ed this work while stay­ing in Lon­don. Time con­straints alone made it impos­si­ble for him to sin­gle-hand­ed­ly under­take an analy­sis of the mate­r­i­al gath­ered. There­fore, he now involved renowned botanists from all over Europe (Krieger 2017a, Har­ri­son 2011, Wal­lich 1830). Along with famous British names like George Ben­tham, William Jack­son Hook­er, Robert Brown or Robert Gre­ville, one also finds in his cor­re­spon­dence names from Den­mark, France, Switzer­land and an entire list of researchers from the wider Ger­man-speak­ing world or Ger­mans work­ing abroad.

Wal­lich him­self sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cat­a­logued his exten­sive cor­re­spon­dence which is now kept in the Cen­tral Nation­al Herbar­i­um in the Botan­i­cal Gar­den of Cal­cut­ta in the form of a chrono­log­i­cal index. This index also con­tains infor­ma­tion about let­ters that are no longer trace­able as well as addi­tion­al bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion about spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als that the botanist some­times added. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the index ends in 1831 and is, there­fore, incom­plete. The let­ters them­selves, which in most cas­es were addressed to Wal­lich, have also been bound chrono­log­i­cal­ly in annu­al vol­umes (some vol­umes encom­pass sev­er­al years). In many cas­es, the date of receipt and even the date of reply are not­ed on the let­ters. How­ev­er, the paper is some­times either in a poor or in a very poor con­di­tion. Some let­ters have come loose from the bind­ing, are no longer in their orig­i­nal vol­ume and are, there­fore, dif­fi­cult to date today if no date is men­tioned, or if the date can­not be ascer­tained from the contents.

This makes it all the more impor­tant to con­sult oth­er archives, which can be used to sup­ple­ment the col­lec­tion of let­ters in Cal­cut­ta. Besides the per­ti­nent British and Dan­ish archives, i.e. the hold­ings of their East India Com­pa­nies, the var­i­ous sci­en­tif­ic soci­eties, the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in Kew (and else­where in Great Britain) as well as in Copen­hagen, Ger­man archives, espe­cial­ly the papers in the estates of indi­vid­ual botanists, are use­ful. Occa­sion­al­ly they con­tain let­ters from Wal­lich him­self, which are some­times only avail­able as a copy or a draft in Cal­cut­ta. Parts of the cor­re­spon­dence that are no longer avail­able there, or are dam­aged, can also be found here. In addi­tion, one finds dis­cus­sions among the botanists about Wal­lich and India and about the world­wide exchange, so that hold­ings in Syd­ney or Cape Town, for exam­ple, also become rel­e­vant. With the help of these sources one can exam­ine the prac­tice and the actu­al process of botan­i­cal research and com­mu­ni­ca­tion on India and beyond and the role of glob­al net­works, but also career strate­gies and struc­tures of patron­age of indi­vid­ual pro­tag­o­nists and insti­tu­tions. The over­ar­ch­ing ques­tion in all this con­cerns the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Ger­mans in the impe­r­i­al pen­e­tra­tion of India. After all, even at this point of time Ger­man-speak­ing botanists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the empire of knowl­edge, prof­it­ed from its col­lec­tions and from inter­na­tion­al exchange and con­tributed to it with their own arti­cles. With their sci­en­tif­ic exper­tise they thus cre­at­ed or sup­port­ed, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, the colo­nial man­age­ment of eco-sys­tems and, in end effect, also their exploita­tion. Botany was often close­ly inter­twined with polit­i­cal and bureau­crat­ic struc­tures and both sides were depen­dent on each other.

Germans in the Colonies

In Wallich’s schol­ar­ly net­work, which was not just lim­it­ed to peo­ple who only stud­ied plants, but also includ­ed nat­u­ral­ists in gen­er­al as also philol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans, Ger­man-speak­ing researchers occu­py a con­sid­er­able space. How­ev­er, a dis­tinc­tion must be made between those on the spot, i.e. those who were qua­si in the field as col­lec­tors in India or in oth­er colonies and those who only shared mate­r­i­al and cor­re­spond­ed with Wal­lich from study-rooms at home. The lat­ter group main­ly con­sists of uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors or peo­ple in charge of botan­i­cal gar­dens, while those in the for­mer group could often also be ama­teur botanists who, along with their main job, for exam­ple as mis­sion­ar­ies, as ship cap­tains, as phar­ma­cists or in the mil­i­tary, col­lect­ed flo­ra and fau­na. The tran­si­tions were flu­id. Wal­lich him­self had been a doc­tor before he took over the Botan­i­cal Gar­den. A major com­po­nent of his train­ing, how­ev­er, had also been botany (Krieger 2014). The same is also true for phar­ma­cists who emi­grat­ed in large num­bers to the colonies in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry due to the lack of prospects in Europe. In addi­tion to the cor­re­spon­dents already named, there were also Ger­mans who did not them­selves botanise, but who offered help, for exam­ple, by pro­vid­ing infra­struc­ture and logis­tics, or by facil­i­tat­ing valu­able con­tacts. For instance, in 1843 Wal­lich par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sur­vey­ing expe­di­tion in South Africa, which he want­ed to use for botan­i­cal excur­sions in the Ceder­berg moun­tains (Krieger 2017a). Ships often docked in the Cape Colony as a stopover sta­tion to and from India in order also to pick up pro­vi­sions. Some Ger­man botanists and ama­teur explor­ers, like Adel­bert von Chamis­so, in 1818, also used this halt for small­er excur­sions and there­fore sought con­tact with the many Ger­mans liv­ing in Cape Town (Chamis­so 1836), who were con­spic­u­ous­ly recruit­ed from the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try and often also botanised. For his sur­vey­ing expe­di­tion, how­ev­er, Wal­lich con­tact­ed the Rhen­ish Mis­sion at the South African Wup­perthal mis­sion sta­tion, named after the Ger­man town. From there local porters, ox-wag­ons and food sup­plies were organ­ised. Often the mis­sion­ar­ies were already in regions which the Euro­peans had not yet devel­oped, or which were com­plete­ly unknown. Thus, they could offer a base and local knowl­edge. In Wallich’s cor­re­spon­dence there is a map of the Cape Colony giv­en to him by the Rhen­ish Mis­sion in which the var­i­ous sta­tions of the dif­fer­ent mis­sion soci­eties were marked. Con­verse­ly, the botanist and doc­tor helped the mis­sion­ar­ies with med­ical prob­lems since doc­tors were rare, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al regions.

Long before Wallich’s sojourn in South Africa, var­i­ous Ger­man botanists had writ­ten to him from there, one of them being the well-known phar­ma­cist Carl Fer­di­nand Hein­rich von Lud­wig, known as Baron Lud­wig.  This man from Würt­tem­berg had acquired con­sid­er­able eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal influ­ence in the colo­nial soci­ety of Cape Town. His real pas­sion, how­ev­er, was to botanise, which led, among oth­er things, to set­ting up a botan­i­cal gar­den that an increas­ing num­ber of Euro­pean guests came to vis­it (Brad­low 1965). He was con­stant­ly on the look­out for plants from all parts of the world for his gar­den, and he had also con­tact­ed Wal­lich in Cal­cut­ta in this con­text. Wal­lich was also con­tact­ed by Ger­man botanists Carl Wil­helm Lud­wig Pappe, a doc­tor, as well as Karl Lud­wig Philipp Zey­her and Chris­t­ian Friedrich Eck­lon, both phar­ma­cists, liv­ing in Cape Town. In the lat­ter cas­es, two ship’s cap­tains had paved the way as per­son­al con­nect­ing links so to speak on the route between Cape Town and Cal­cut­ta. In exchange for South Asian plants, the Ger­man botanists offered Wal­lich plants from South Africa. Wal­lich lat­er vis­it­ed all of them dur­ing his stay in Cape Town, and a brisk exchange took place with plants being redis­trib­uted, for exam­ple, to India, Eng­land, or Ger­many. Cape Town served as the nodal point for communication.

It is notice­able that in his cor­re­spon­dence with mis­sion­ar­ies of the Cape Colony, Wal­lich does not deal with any botan­i­cal ques­tions. This is in marked con­trast to the cor­re­spon­dence with mis­sion­ar­ies in South Asia who were active as col­lec­tors and part­ly also as sci­en­tists and who, for this rea­son alone, sought con­tact with Wal­lich and oth­er nat­u­ral­ists. The Mora­vian Ben­jamin Heyne is one of them, as are Bern­hard Schmid and oth­ers. Besides these, one would also have to name some Ger­man mis­sion­ar­ies of the Dan­ish-Eng­lish-Halle mis­sion which had been work­ing since 1706 in and around Tran­que­bar. These mis­sion­ar­ies were Christoph Samuel John, Johann Got­tfried Klein, and Johann Peter Rot­tler, who had known Wallich’s pre­de­ces­sor, William Rox­burgh, in Cal­cut­ta (Robin­son 2008). Lat­er, in Europe, Wal­lich also gave away parts of their India col­lec­tions to Ger­man botanists for fur­ther study. By far the most impor­tant, how­ev­er, were the British Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies in Ser­am­pore who, unlike the mis­sion­ar­ies in South India, were even geo­graph­i­cal­ly clos­er to Wal­lich and his fam­i­ly. The long-stand­ing Dan­ish-Eng­lish-Halle mis­sion was already in a peri­od of decline, the Mora­vian Brethren had already left Ben­gal when Wal­lich arrived there and soon after they even left India. For the mis­sion­ar­ies left in India, who lived in rather pre­car­i­ous cir­cum­stances, col­lect­ing and sell­ing plants was some­times a busi­ness mod­el with good prospects. This was true, for exam­ple, of Schmid who, after the Church Mis­sion Soci­ety could no longer sup­port him in 1845, intend­ed to set up his own botan­i­cal gar­den in the Nil­giri moun­tains and to sell plants from all over the world to Eng­land. The mis­sion direc­tors in Europe did not always approve of such activ­i­ties. Despite this, a rel­a­tive­ly large num­ber of mis­sion­ar­ies took part in the study of nature. They includ­ed, along with the groups already men­tioned, also the mis­sion­ar­ies of the Basel mission.

Mil­i­tary per­son­nel in con­tact with Wal­lich were most­ly from the British army. India-trav­ellers who had a mil­i­tary ori­en­ta­tion like Leopold von Orlich or Wern­er Friedrich Hoffmeis­ter, who accom­pa­nied Prince Walde­mar of Prus­sia on his jour­ney through India, also briefly men­tion the Botan­i­cal Gar­den in Cal­cut­ta, the muse­um there, or even Wal­lich in their pub­lished trav­el­ogues (Orlich 1845, Hoffmeis­ter 1847, Ori­o­la 1853). How­ev­er, Wallich’s cor­re­spon­dence does not con­tain any let­ters from them. Von Orlich is only men­tioned indi­rect­ly. They were often con­cerned with eco­nom­ic top­ics such as opi­um cul­ti­va­tion in Pat­na. Hoffmeis­ter and von Orlich were also in con­tact with Alexan­der von Hum­boldt. Hoffmeis­ter wrote trea­tis­es on plants col­lect­ed in India and on veg­e­ta­tion zones, and he also under­took his own mea­sure­ments. He sent his Indi­an herbar­i­um for eval­u­a­tion to Johann Friedrich Klotzsch, cus­to­di­an of the Botan­i­cal Gar­den in Berlin (Hoffmeis­ter 1846, Gar­cke 1862).

Ger­man sci­en­tif­ic explor­ers were far more sig­nif­i­cant, but they sel­dom received per­mis­sion from the EIC to work in India. Rival­ries cer­tain­ly played a role in this, although many botanists demand­ed that the Ger­mans be includ­ed to a far greater extent. It was more by chance that Wal­lich met Carl Theodor Philip­pi from Berlin, nephew of the botanist Rudolf Aman­dus Philip­pi. Dur­ing his own South East Asian jour­ney, C. T. Philip­pi tem­porar­i­ly took part in the Dan­ish Galathea expe­di­tion which cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the world between 1845 and 1847, under­took some explo­rations on the Nico­bar Islands and, among oth­er places, also vis­it­ed Cal­cut­ta. C. T. Philip­pi col­lect­ed some mol­luscs that were lat­er described by his uncle (Kabat, Coan 2017). In Cal­cut­ta, Wal­lich also gave the for­mer some seeds and plants, which he sent on to Berlin where Alexan­der von Hum­boldt and some politi­cians, among oth­ers, dis­trib­uted them to var­i­ous botanists (Krieger 2017b). There is also some indi­ca­tion of Pruss­ian colo­nial inter­ests because Philip­pi even sent sam­ples of dif­fer­ent pre­cious met­als to Berlin. In Philippi’s opin­ion, the cap­tain of the Galathea, Steen Bille, was also inter­est­ed in a pos­si­ble “cul­ti­va­tion” of the Nico­bar Islands by the Danes (Bille 1852, 169). Wallich’s con­tact with the Bohemi­ans Johann Wil­helm Helfer and his wife Pauline was far more inten­sive. Among oth­er things, Helfer had tak­en part in Colonel Chesney’s Euphrates-expe­di­tion in 1836 and had then trav­elled on to India where he tried to obtain research com­mis­sions by high­light­ing spe­cif­ic themes in lec­tures. Osten­si­bly he was empha­siz­ing — as the EIC want­ed – mer­can­tile inter­ests, but his real motives also had to do with the study of nature (Nos­tiz 2004). Wal­lich was instru­men­tal in paving the way for an expe­di­tion to Tenasser­im financed by the EIC, for which Helfer received let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion and instruc­tions from the botanist. In return, the explor­er wrote to Wal­lich about the dif­fi­cul­ties and the results of his jour­ney, but he tried to be fair to all his spon­sors by empha­siz­ing his botan­i­cal inter­ests to Wal­lich in par­tic­u­lar, but by also work­ing on ques­tions of the search for raw mate­ri­als (wood, min­er­al coal etc.) for Britain.

The German-speaking World

Wallich’s cor­re­spon­dence with peo­ple in the Ger­man-speak­ing world took place main­ly dur­ing his sojourn in Europe between 1828 and 1832 and relat­ed to the gen­er­ous dis­tri­b­u­tion of the Indi­an plants he had tak­en with him. Before this peri­od, there are only few such direct con­tacts, but after this some con­tin­ued and devel­oped into friend­ships. The botanist Johann Georg Chris­t­ian Lehmann, pro­fes­sor for nat­ur­al his­to­ry and founder of the Ham­burg Botan­i­cal Gar­den, and the pro­fes­sor of botany in Berlin, Karl Sigis­mund Kunth, even vis­it­ed Wal­lich in Lon­don in order to get a first-hand impres­sion of the Indi­an plants and also met his fam­i­ly in the process. Oth­er botanists like Chris­t­ian Got­tfried Daniel Nees von Esen­beck of Bonn and Bres­lau (Wro­claw), direc­tor of the Leopold­ina from 1818 till 1858, or Carl Friedrich Philipp von Mar­tius of Munich regret­ted not hav­ing done this, but they remained in active con­tact with Wal­lich even after he had returned to India. Accord­ing­ly, the cor­re­spon­dence that is acces­si­ble deals not only with spe­cial­ist top­ics, but also touch­es upon, for exam­ple, fam­i­ly, health, or even polit­i­cal issues. Ques­tions of com­pe­ti­tion and career were also sig­nif­i­cant aspects of the cor­re­spon­dence. Alleged­ly unjus­ti­fied appoint­ments, rival­ries and oth­er scan­dals in the uni­ver­si­ties and botan­i­cal gar­dens were men­tioned, or attempts were made to place one’s own stu­dents or oth­er acquain­tances with Wal­lich in India. The con­nec­tions were also based on the prin­ci­ple of rec­i­p­ro­cal ben­e­fits. These includ­ed expec­ta­tions of rec­i­p­ro­cal cita­tions, of plant exchanges and fore­words, of trans­la­tions, sub­scrip­tions and of the nam­ing of plants after sci­en­tists. Lob­by­ing in each other’s coun­tries was also part of this since the 1830s was a peri­od when there was grow­ing pres­sure on British botanists to attune their work more to the inter­ests of the econ­o­my and to the prin­ci­ple of use­ful­ness (Dray­ton 2000).

The insti­tu­tion­al dimen­sion, there­fore, was not only a ques­tion of mem­ber­ship in sci­en­tif­ic acad­e­mies, but also let­ters of thanks from or to state insti­tu­tions. Act­ing upon Wallich’s advice and for­ward­ed by him, von Mar­tius sent the direc­tors of the EIC a thank-you let­ter and his writ­ten works for the EIC library at the Cal­cut­ta Botan­i­cal Gar­den. At the meet­ing of Ger­man nat­u­ral­ists and doc­tors in 1830 in Ham­burg, the botan­i­cal sec­tion resolved to fol­low Lehmann’s wish­es and to send, as a mark of their grat­i­tude, a joint let­ter each to the EIC, to Wal­lich and to the King of Eng­land. The let­ters were also accom­pa­nied by the request to allow Wal­lich to stay longer in Europe to bet­ter organ­ise the pub­li­ca­tion of his works. Oth­er offi­cial insti­tu­tions were also involved in the sci­en­tif­ic exchange. Through the direc­tor Hein­rich Friedrich Link, the poet and nat­u­ral­ist Adel­bert von Chamis­so and the cus­to­di­an Johann Friedrich Klotzsch the Pruss­ian Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein expressed his thanks in 1837 to Wal­lich in Cal­cut­ta and Robert Wight in Madras for the col­lec­tions placed at the dis­pos­al of the Neu-Schӧneberg Herbarium.

Indi­rect con­nec­tions to indi­vid­ual botanists were also estab­lished. When, for exam­ple, Bern­hard Schmid returned from India, he vis­it­ed Jonathan Carl Zenker, pro­fes­sor of botany in Jena, and hand­ed over the plants he had col­lect­ed in India so that they could be described and drawn. Zenker had also estab­lished an India-sec­tion in the Botan­i­cal Gar­den in Jena. Schmid wrote a detailed let­ter to Wal­lich about this meet­ing. Botanists also often sought the help of their col­leagues to for­ward a par­cel when it was a ques­tion of using the fastest and most favourable route for send­ing plants or lit­er­a­ture. Nees von Esen­beck asked Wal­lich to send him texts to Bres­lau (Wro­claw) through Lehmann in Ham­burg. Wal­lich also had to for­ward plants to British col­leagues, or Lehmann would facil­i­tate trans­port to or from South Africa and from there to India. In this way one also shared infor­ma­tion about botanist col­leagues, regard­less of whether one knew them per­son­al­ly or not.

Archives and Holdings

The Depart­ment for the His­to­ry of North­ern Europe at the Chris­t­ian Albrechts Uni­ver­si­ty in Kiel offers an open access data­base with infor­ma­tion about rough­ly 5000 let­ters of var­i­ous prove­nances from and to Wal­lich. Data added includes author, addressee, place and date, wher­ev­er avail­able, bio­graph­i­cal data for the most impor­tant peo­ple, as well as the rel­e­vant archives. In addi­tion to the Wal­lich doc­u­ments, it is worth­while to look at lit­er­ary estates and auto­graph-col­lec­tions of oth­er Ger­man archives. Much of the mate­r­i­al is acces­si­ble online in the Kalliope Union Cat­a­log. As far as the Berlin hold­ings of Adel­bert von Chamis­so or Alexan­der von Hum­boldt are con­cerned, most of the doc­u­ments can even be accessed online. Hum­boldt him­self rarely appears in the Wal­lich hold­ings, but he seems to have often received botan­i­cal mate­r­i­al and infor­ma­tion from Wal­lich. Hum­boldt was, in gen­er­al, extreme­ly inter­est­ed in India, and this result­ed in his sup­port for var­i­ous India-trav­ellers such as von Orlich and the Schlag­in­tweit broth­ers. He him­self could not trav­el to India due to oppo­si­tion from the EIC.

Also inter­est­ing are the hold­ings of the Zoo­log­i­cal Muse­um in what is today called the Muse­um für Naturkunde (Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um) in Berlin (His­tor­i­cal Depart­ment). Although the hold­ings that are organ­ised by name (Zool. Mus.) do not con­tain any let­ter from Wal­lich, they do have some archival doc­u­ments about Johann Wil­helm Helfer’s expe­di­tion to Tenasser­im and the role played by Alexan­der von Hum­boldt in it. The same is true for Leopold von Orlich and his lat­er attempts to serve as the inter­me­di­ary for the nat­ur­al his­to­ry exchange between Berlin and India, or for the nat­ur­al his­to­ry spec­i­mens brought by Wern­er Hoffmeis­ter. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the doc­u­ments in the Berlin­er Botanis­chen Garten (Berlin Botan­i­cal Gar­den) were lost dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. There­fore, there is noth­ing to be found there on Wallich.

Rudolph Ben­no von Rӧmer’s exten­sive col­lec­tion in Leipzig is of spe­cial inter­est. He was friends with the pro­fes­sor of botany Gus­tav Kun­ze, inter­est­ed in botany after study­ing under Kun­ze and a famous col­lec­tor. He left all his books on botany as well as his exten­sive herbar­i­um to the Uni­ver­sitäts­bib­lio­thek Leipzig (Leipzig Uni­ver­si­ty library) where the hold­ings can be accessed today (UB Leipzig, Slg. Rӧmer/NL 133). Kunze’s lit­er­ary estate is also avail­able there (UB Leipzig, Nach­lass Gus­tav Kun­ze Ms.0352) and, apart from some let­ters about Wallich’s India col­lec­tion, it also con­tains cor­re­spon­dence with the botanists of the Cape Colony, some of whom had been Kunze’s stu­dents, with pro­fes­so­r­i­al col­leagues and with Bern­hard Schmid. The let­ters have been list­ed in Kalliope. The same holds true for the exten­sive cor­re­spon­dence of the botanist von Mar­tius in Munich, which is kept in the Bay­erische Staats­bib­lio­thek (Bavar­i­an State Library) in Munich (BSB Mar­tiu­sana II A) and, com­pared to that of oth­er Ger­man pro­fes­sors, con­tains the largest amount of source mate­r­i­al on Wal­lich and India.

An overview of the hold­ings of the Ham­burg botanist Lehmann are on the web­site of the Staats- und Uni­ver­sitäts­bib­lio­thek Ham­burg (State- and Uni­ver­si­ty Library Ham­burg) (http://www.sub.uni-hamburg.de/sammlungen/nachlass-und-autographen‌sammlung‌/‌na‌c‌h‌laesse-und-autographen-von-a‑z.html#c6563), which is stor­ing parts of the estate (Nach­lass Johann Georg Chris­t­ian Lehmann, 1 Archivkas­ten, 1 Bd. NL Lehmann, Briefe an Lehmann (Thes. ep.: 4^o : 65) und Diplome (Bd.); Adres­sat Briefe NJGL: B; Ver­fass­er Brief LA (Lit­er­at­u­rar­chiv): Lehmann, Johann Georg Chris­t­ian). Besides his Wal­lich-let­ters his cor­re­spon­dence with South Africa and his work as an inter­me­di­ary are of great interest.

The let­ters of the India mis­sion­ary Bern­hard Schmid, on the oth­er hand, are dis­trib­uted across var­i­ous archives and libraries. They can be found online in the well-cat­a­logued Mis­sion­sarchiv der Franck­eschen Stiftun­gen zu Halle (mis­sion archives of the Francke Foun­da­tions at Halle) (AFSt/M), where oth­er mis­sion­ar­ies like John, Klein, or Rot­tler can also be found, as also in the Uni­ver­sitäts­bib­lio­thek Hei­del­berg (Hei­del­berg uni­ver­si­ty library) and scat­tered in Nurem­berg or Dres­den or in Kunze’s estate in Leipzig. The mis­sion­ar­ies par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­vide good insights into the con­crete prac­tice of col­lect­ing plants on site in India, the dif­fi­cul­ties that arose there­in, and the paths and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the col­lec­tions. Also of inter­est are the hold­ings of the Leopold­ina in Halle relat­ed to its pres­i­dent Nees von Esen­beck, who was in close con­tact with Wal­lich and oth­er botanists.

Published Sources

Bille, Steen, Bericht über die Reise der Corvette Galathea um die Welt in den Jahren 1845, 46 und 47. Aus dem Dänis­chen über­set­zt, und theil­weise bear­beit­et von W. v. Rosen, 1. Bd. Kopen­hagen, Leipzig: 1852.

Chamis­so, Adel­bert von, Reise um die Welt. 2 Bde. Leipzig: 1836.

Hoffmeis­ter, Adolph (Hg.), Briefe aus Indi­en, von W. Hoffmeis­ter, Arzt im Gefolge Sr. Königl. Hoheit des Prinzen Walde­mar von Preussen; nach dessen nachge­lasse­nen Briefen u. Tage­büch­ern. Mit ein­er Vorrede von C. Rit­ter und sieben topographis­chen Karten. Braun­schweig: 1847.

Hoffmeis­ter, Wern­er, “Ueber die Ver­bre­itung der Conifer­en am Himalayah, aus einem Schreiben des Dr. W. Hoffmeis­ter an Hrn. v. Hum­boldt”. Botanis­che Zeitung 4 (1846), S. 177–185.

Klotzsch, Friedrich und August Gar­cke, Die botanis­chen Ergeb­nisse der Reise sein­er Königlichen Hoheit des Prinzen Walde­mar von Preußen in den Jahren 1845 und 1846 durch Wern­er Hoffmeis­ter auf Cey­lon, dem Himalaya und an den Gren­zen von Tibet gesam­melte Pflanzen. 2 Bde. Berlin: 1862.

Nos­tiz, Gräfin Pauline, Johann Wil­helm Helfer’s Reisen in Vorderasien und Indi­en. Berlin: 2004 (zuerst Leipzig: 1873).

Ori­o­la, Eduard von, Hein­rich Mahlmann, Zur Erin­nerung an die Reise des Prinzen Walde­mar von Preußen nach Indi­en in den Jahren 1844–1846. Die Illus­tra­tio­nen aus­ge­führt nach Reis­eskizzen des Prinzen von Fer­di­nand Beller­mann und Her­mann Kret­zschmer. 2 Bde. Berlin: 1853.

Orlich, Leopold von, Reise in Ostin­di­en, in Briefen an Alexan­der von Hum­boldt und Carl Rit­ter. 2 Bde. Leipzig: 1845.

Wal­lich, Nathaniel, Plan­tae Asi­at­i­cae rar­i­ores, or, Descrip­tions and fig­ures of a select num­ber of unpub­lished East Indi­an plants. 3 Vols. Lon­don: 1830–32.

Secondary Literature

Arnold, David, “Plant Cap­i­tal­ism and Com­pa­ny Sci­ence. The Indi­an Career of Nathaniel Wal­lich”. Mod­ern Asian Stud­ies 42, 5 (2008): pp. 899–928.

Brad­low, Frank R., Baron von Lud­wig and the Ludwig’s‑Burg Gar­den. A Chron­i­cle of the Cape from 1806 to 1848. Cape Town: 1965.

Dray­ton, Richard, Nature’s Gov­ern­ment. Sci­ence, Impe­r­i­al Britain, and the ‚Improve­ment‘ of the World. New Haven: 2000.

Har­ri­son, Mark, “The Cal­cut­ta Botan­ic Gar­den and the Wider World, 1817–46”. In: Uma Das Gup­ta (ed.) Sci­ence and Mod­ern India: An Insti­tu­tion­al His­to­ry, c.1784–1947. Del­hi: 2011, pp. 235–255.

Kabat, Alan R. und Eugene Vic­tor Coan, “The Life and Work of Rudolph Aman­dus Philip­pi (1808–1904)”. Mala­colo­gia 60, 1–2 (2017): pp. 1–30.

Krieger, Mar­tin, Nathaniel Wal­lich. Ein Botaniker zwis­chen Kopen­hagen und Kalkut­ta. Ham­burg-Kiel: 2017.

——–, „Die ‚Galathea‘ in Kalkut­ta. Natur­forschung und kolo­niale Macht“. In: Oliv­er Auge, Mar­tin Göll­nitz (Hg.) Mit Forscher­drang und Aben­teuer­lust. Expe­di­tio­nen und Forschungsreisen Kiel­er Wis­senschaft­lerin­nen und Wis­senschaftler. Frank­furt am Main: 2017, S. 23–36.

——–, “Nathaniel Wal­lichs kar­riere i Ser­am­pore og Cal­cut­ta 1808–1815”. Per­son­al­his­torisk Tidsskrift 2014, pp. 69–86.

Robin­son, Tim, William Rox­burgh. The Found­ing Father of Indi­an Botany. Chich­ester: 2008.

Tobias Delfs, IAAW, Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin