Seized natural-history collections and the redefinition of scientific cosmopolitanism in the era of the French Revolution

Bibliographic Data

ID8392017
AuthorsELISE S LIPKOWITZ, Elise Lipkowitz (University of Michigan, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume47
Issue1
Pages15-41
Publication date2014-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal for the History of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0874 • E-ISSN: 1474-001X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0007087413000010
OpenAlexW2135540450
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited26

In order to recast scholarly understanding of scientific cosmopolitanism during the French Revolution, this essay examines the stories of the natural-history collections of the Dutch Stadholder and the French naturalist Labillardière that were seized as war booty. The essay contextualizes French and British savants' responses to the seized collections within their respective understandings of the relationship between science and state and of the property rights associated with scientific collections, and definitions of war booty that antedated modern transnational legal conventions. The essay argues that the French and British savants' responses to seized natural-history collections demonstrate no universal approach to their treatment. Nonetheless, it contends that the French and British approaches to these collections reveal the emergence in the 1790s of new forms of scientific nationalism that purported to be cosmopolitan – French scientific universalism and British liberal scientific improvement

Art · Cosmopolitanism · Epistemology · French revolution · Literature · Nationalism · Natural history · Naturalism · Political science · Scientific revolution · State (computer science · Universalism · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy

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