Includes bibliographical references (pages 286-297) and index.
Contents
"The Base for All Economics" -- Voyaging Out -- Botanistes Voyageurs -- Maria Sibylla Merian -- Biopirates -- Who Owns Nature? -- Voyaging Botanical Assistants -- Creole Naturalists and Long-Term Residents -- Armchair Botanists -- The Search for the Amazons -- Heroic Narratives -- Bioprospecting -- Drug Prospecting in the West Indies -- Biocontact Zones -- Secrets and Monopolies -- Drug Prospecting at Home -- Brokers of International Knowledge -- Exotic Abortifacients -- Merian's Peacock Flower -- Abortion in Europe -- Abortion in the West Indies -- Abortion and the Slave Trade -- The Fate of the Peacock Flower in Europe -- Animal Testing -- Self-Experimentation -- Human Subjects -- Testing for Sexual Difference -- The Complications of Race -- Abortifacients -- Linguistic Imperialism -- Empire and Naming the Kingdoms of Nature -- Naming Conundrums -- Exceptions: Quassia and Cinchona -- Alternative Naming Practices -- Conclusion: Agnotology.
Summary
"In this account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean population."--BOOK JACKET.