Interdisciplinary symposium to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of the Botanical Gardens in Bogor | ‘Plant Science at Bogor Botanical Gardens, 1817-2017’

In 2017, the Botanical Gardens in Bogor, Indonesia, celebrate their 200th anniversary. This interdisciplinary symposium examines plant science at the garden in Bogor by asking how changing local and global alliances shaped the study of plants in Indonesia from the early 1800s under Dutch rule to the age of decolonization. What emerges is a picture of the Garden that constantly had to renew itself. Plant science at the Garden was the product of coordination and competition between different disciplines, institutes, communities and networks in Asia and beyond. However, although Bogor plant science altered over time partly thanks to the dynamics of global and local alliances it built on, there were continuities too. Since its establishment in 1817, the Garden formed part of a colonial an imperial bureaucracy which considered knowledge about nature as an extension of the emerging colonial state. In order to provide a fresh view on the Gardens’ entangled past, this interdisciplinary symposium brings together historians and biologists from Europe and the US whose research concern the history of plant science and neigboring disciplines in Bogor and the Indonesian Archipelago.

Convenors:
Andreas Weber (University of Twente)
Robert-Jan Wille (Utrecht University)
Paul Keßler (Hortus Botanicus Leiden)

This symposium is realised with support of:
KITLV
Hortus botanicus Leiden
Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives (NWO)
Leiden Asia Year
Descartes Centre, Utrecht

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