Knowledge Generation, Education and Careers – the Role of Travelling in Linnaean Natural History
Hanna Hodacs (Rostock Sept. 2013)
The broad framework of my paper is the role of travelling in science. The scientific revolution of the 17th century promoted empiricism as the foundation of knowledge. Travelling played a key part in generating new empirical knowledge from observations and objects.[1]
The science that I am going to focus on in this paper is natural history, and particularly developments in the second half of the 18th century.
My starting point is this guy Carolus Linnaeus.
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A brief background here to anyone who might not be familiar with Linnaeus; he is a reference point in the history of natural history primarily due to his modernisation of the scientific nomenclature, how to name species of animals, plants and types of minerals. Linnaeus used binary names, he gave each species two names, one indicating what family or genus it belonged to, and one separating it from other members of that genus.
The nomenclature was introduced to an international audience in Linnaeus’ global flora Species Plantarum, published in 1753 soon adopted across the Western World. It is still used today.
One reason Linnaeus could have such influence in the world of 18th century natural history was because of his network of correspondence, they provided him with observations and samples of plants, animals and minerals. Another and in this paper more important source of material and information was his travelling students. Pehr Osbeck for example, was one of Linnaeus’ students who travelled on a Swedish East India man to China in the beginning of the 1750s. He provided Linnaeus with material relating to XX species listed in Species Plantarum. Osbeck is just one of around 20 or so students that frequently are referred to as Linnaeus’ apostles or disciples.
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The journeys of these students are often represented with the help of this map from the mid-20th century. Not only does it give an outline of the geographical reach of the journeys of Linnaeus’ students. It also suggest a way of thinking about Sweden’s past, as a centre of a non-colonizing force, diffusing and promoting science instead of building empires. This map forms a natural precursor to the status of Sweden as the host of the Noble price.
It is a map that Linnaeus would have liked too, underlining his role sending out apostles exploring the flora and the fauna of the world. It also of course reflects on his achievements as a teacher at Uppsala University. Linnaeus held a chair in Medicine at this university between 1741 and 1778 teaching more than 500 students.
I am going to talk about two things this map does not portray.
Firstly the role of travelling as a form of education and graduation, marking the rite de passage which turned early modern students into scholars. To the individual students, journeys of the kind Linnaeus promoted, and they included travels within the domestic realm as well, was primarily I would say, a way of moving on in once education and career, rather than contributing to a global natural history inventory project. Secondly, I am going to talk about the role of informants in the tradition of Linnaean travelling, about the economic framework that rendered talking to local people an important part of travelling, and how this was played out in different contexts.
Both those lines of enquiry illuminates connections between agency, travelling and knowledge generation but also conditions which were specific for the 18th century but not necessary later centuries.
Travelling and careers
Excursions have a long tradition in the discipline of natural history. This subject was taught in the early modern universities as part of the medicine curriculum. Plants provided the raw material for many drugs. To know botany was to know which plants to use and where to find them. Next to botanical gardens the landscapes around the universities formed outdoor class rooms in which particularly the foundations of systematic botany was thought.
Linnaeus was in no way an avant-garde in his use of excursions teaching natural history at Uppsala university.
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This slide is an 19th century depiction of such an event, a very romantic portrayal. It is worth highlighting that very few women are believed to have taken part, and many of the students were poor.
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Moreover, what marks out Linnaeus’s pedagogics was his systematic use of the landscape around Uppsala for teaching. His excursions followed the same eight paths year on year, with different biotops providing class rooms for botany, zoology and entomology. The excursions, called Herbationens Upsaliensis, were very popular with students, not only from the Faculty of Medicine, sometimes up to half of all the students at the university join in.
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Here is a picture of the landscape around Uppsala, with a few thousand inhabitants this was a small town, the cathedral and castle the most prominent buildings, situated on a plain. It is very flat, the land is still rising, as a delayed response to the weight of the thick layers of ice that shaped the landscape during the last ice age.
Moreover, next to local excursions Linnaeus also argued that his students should undertake regional journeys, doing a form of domestic grand tours. Linnaeus set the example himself, with the exception of his trip to Lapland in 1732 Linnaeus own journeys within Sweden were undertaken in the company of groups of students.[2]
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This map here outlines Linnaeus solo trip to Lapland in 1732 but also his first regional journey around the county of Dalcarnia in 1734, a trip during which 7 students travelled with him.
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1741, 46 and 49 he undertook three other journeys, although during the latter two only one student came along.
Linnaeus domestic journeys have been called “travelling colloquium” (collokvium). On his journey around the county of Dalacarnia Linnaeus gave each student their own areas of responsibility. One was to concentrate on botany, one on mineralogy etc. Each evening observations were noted down in their jointly held travel journal. After a similar journey to the Baltic Islands of Gotland and Oland, Linnaeus commented that by the end of trip his students needed hardly any reminder or guidance when making observations of peculiar and useful things.
Travelling was in other words strongly associated with learning. The length of the journey determined the type of knowledge transferred. Around Uppsala the excursions gave an opportunity to test the taxonomy taught in the lecture hall, how to identify plants drawing on the sexual system, Linnaeus innovation and a system in which the number and position of stamens and pistils determined the identity of the plant.
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On longer journeys the outdoors offered opportunities to, as Linnaeus put it, “sharpen the eyes”, to make observations which was about separating the rare from the common, while walking over meadows, cross ditches and along shorelines .
Moreover, many journeys included senior and junior students travelling together. More systematic approaches to exploring nature, such as e.g. how to conduct extensive field studies, for example comparing thousands of living samples of the same species in search for taxonomically significant variations, were transferred on the move, from the senior to the junior naturalist.
Linnaeus’ students were in other words not only taught the theoretical foundations of their teacher’s new taxonomy, they were also trained in how to apply it outdoors. Encouraged to use their eyes to scan landscapes searching for novel and rare natural objects or features it was partially a form of embodied knowledge, they were taught how to gaze, how to use their eyes.
This training in combination with in-depth knowledge of Linnaeus’ universally applicable systems for identifying and describing plants and animals gave the students a competence to explore landscapes across the globe.
I am currently working on a project studying the role of Swedish naturalists in London and the British empire.
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The starting point for this project is the presence of Linnaeus’ students outside Sweden reflects on the success of Linnaeus’ taxonomy in 18th century Europe. But the journeys of Linnaean scholars moving between Uppsala and London does also illustrate the need for naturalists in the British empire.
Linnaeus universal approach to natural history, the ambition to encompass the flora, fauna of the world, made Linnaeus’ students attractive to people like Joseph Banks in London, president of the Royal Society, who employed several Linnaean students to travel the world and to work in his collection and libraries.
Other circumstances, the fact that Sweden was a small neutral country, on the fringe of Europe helped the Swedish naturalists too. One can turn this into a point about North European scholarly culture more generally, and how representatives of it could slot into on-going exploration projects initiated by Britain and Russia.
There are as David Arnold has discussed a very prominent Baltic presence, including German scholars, involved in laying the foundation for the British empire in 19th century India. Likewise the same elite was active in the exploration of Asia as Russia started to map its Eastern territory in the 18th century.
This North European diaspora in the colonial projects of the superpowers of Europe reflected the relatively high level of education around the Baltic Sea, in German speaking areas and in Scandinavia. And likewise of course the fact that both Russia and Britain, or at least England, lacked a university system comprehensive enough to educate enough people to fill positions which required scholarly learning.
Such structural explanation apart, the travellers had agency too. To them travelling formed a phase in a career towards a more secure position. Reading reflections on the pros and cons of travelling it becomes clear that Linnaeus’ students were conscious about the high risks of early modern long distance travelling.
Once back on a long journey the career of the traveller could however be enhanced. In the Swedish case journeys generated contacts and career opportunities among the Swedish elite, it helped create short cuts to positions not exclusively in academia but also in medicine, as provincial physicians, or as in the case of Osbeck within the Swedish church. Osbeck ended his days as the dean of Hasslöv, on the West Coast of Sweden.
Underlining the connection between travelling, education and careers, I am not claiming to present a particularly novel thesis. Existing literature on grand tours and the apodemic tradition in Europe explores similar strands. What marks out my work is the link I make between excursions and exploration, and, between journeys inside and outside Europe; that they were overlapping forms of travelling, and that they can be thought of as part of an education and career strategy.
Secondly, I want to give a contour to a group of travellers, which included not only Linnaeus students but Baltic Scholars more generally, who stood with one foot in the Republic of letters, and another in the scientific explorations associated with the expansion of, maybe particularly, the British Empire.
Thirdly, and discussing Linnaeus scholars more generally, they were very aware of their unique status as Linnaean experts, educated and trained to observe, collect, describe and name a global flora and fauna. It was job prospects at home, as well as job opportunities abroad that pushed and pulled on their journeys.
It is in the light of this I suggest we should understand this map.
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It does not reflect on the peaceful and scientific mind of Swedish people. Empire and Western expansion was an important part of it too. It does only partially reflect on Linnaeus’s as a teacher,. Instead it reflects on an outdoor pedagogy and the career ambitions of a generation of scholars who tried to maximise the benefit of their education and status abroad at a time when Sweden offered a decreasing number of career opportunities.
Finally, the non-visible domestic journeys and excursions Linnaeus’ students undertook in Sweden are a fundamental albeit not visible part of this tradition of travelling.
Informants and audiences
Now to my second part: although the transnational dimension of the labour market for 18th century Baltic naturalists was an important factor it is equally important to acknowledge that the domestic journeys had a value apart from providing education. They also offered opportunities to explore Swedish natural resources further.
Next to the taxonomic system building ambitions Linnaeus also had economic motives. As Lisbeth Koerner most recently argued, his natural history was closely linked to a political economy that has been labelled mercantilism or cameralism. The common denominator was an idea that a state grew rich by reducing import and promoting export. Early modern economic thinking did not stipulate growth, trade between nations were regarded as a zero sum game. One country growing richer meant another became poor.
What disturbed early modern economists in particular was the growing global trade including e.g. the trade with China which was believed to drain European silver resources heavily. Silver which of course originally largely came from Latin America.
It is against this backdrop Linnaean natural history had an important rational. It was a key to promote Swedish home grown or home produced goods over goods imported from abroad. Naturalists were useful because they could bring home and attempt to cultivate exotic plants.