Article ID: CBB410787740

Could Siberian ‘Natural Curiosities’ Be Replaced? Bioprospecting in the Eighteenth-Century (2022)

unapi

This article focuses on three unique products circulating in the eighteenth-century marketplace – castor, mammoth tusks, and asbestos – and highlights the role of naturalists working for the Royal Society in London and at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in promoting the consumption of these goods. Naturalists’ scientific investigations of these products were essential to distinguish and identify the quality (and, correspondingly, the ideal price) of Siberian commodities as compared to similar, or even equivalent, commodities from other regions. When these products were later discovered in the British colonies, the scientific debates between London and St. Petersburg only gained a new urgency, inspiring arguments about authenticity and efficaciousness.

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Authors & Contributors
Murphy, Kathleen S.
Constantino, María Eugenia
Cowie, Helen
Dahlbom, Taika Helola
Delbourgo, James
Digby, Susan A.
Journals
Archives of Natural History
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Early American Studies
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Nauka
Routledge
Yale Center for British Art
The University of North Carolina Press
Tinta da China
Concepts
Specimens
Collectors and collecting
Natural history
Naturalists
Zoology
Collections
People
Petiver, James
Banks, Joseph
Digby, Bassett
Du Chaillu, Paul
Dybowski, Benedykt
Hunter, William
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
20th century, early
17th century
Early modern
20th century
Places
Great Britain
Siberia (Russia)
China
London (England)
Atlantic world
Africa
Institutions
British Museum. Natural History
Royal Society of London
Smithsonian Institution
Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk
Natural History Museum (London, England)
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