Nathaniel Wallich

Setting out from Copenhagen in March 1807 as a young surgeon bound for India, Nathaniel Wallich could hardly have foreseen, amid the upheavals of the Napoleonic era, that he would become one of the leading botanists of the nineteenth century. Most of his adult life unfolded in India, where he served for many years as superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden and built deep knowledge of the subcontinent's plant life. From a workspace overlooking the Hooghly River he ran a far-reaching exchange of letters that linked established specialists with amateur researchers, many of whom have since slipped into obscurity. He also made research journeys to Nepal and Southeast Asia, and he may be counted among the early figures behind tea cultivation in Assam.

The book draws on Wallich's vast correspondence, held in archives in Calcutta, London, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Munich and many other places. Its aim is to trace a career shaped by sharp breaks and contradictions yet also by underlying continuity.

It further shows how ostensibly neutral botanical research was bound up with the growth of British colonial power in India.