Lecture | Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar
Verticality, Agronomic Turn, and the Making of Colonial Botany in the Dutch East Indies
- Date
- Friday 17 October 2025
- Time
- Serie
- Global Histories of Knowledge 2025 - 2026
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- 2.60
Abstract
Throughout the nineteenth century, botanical staff at Buitenzorg—both European and local—extended their work into the uplands surrounding the sacred peaks of Mount Gede and Pangrango. From the base at Cibodas to the mountain summits, they cut forest paths, established gardens, and planted alien crops such as tea and cinchona. These gardens were more than acclimatisation sites. They marked a shift in how colonial science in the Netherlands East Indies used altitude to manage crops, reorder landscapes, and structure knowledge.
This presentation examines how verticality—understood as the mobility of plants, labour, and knowledge across elevation—shaped the agronomic turn that redefined Buitenzorg as a hub for experimental research and colonial agricultural governance. Mountain gardens, botanical laboratories, and experiment stations turned highland landscapes into testing grounds for cash crops, while reimagining Sundanese sacred terrain as imperial agronomic space. Local expertise, from porters to plant collectors, made this work possible. By tracing these vertical geographies, the presentation demonstrates how colonial botany emerged through situated and materially grounded practice.
Speaker
Luthfi Adam is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research, Monash University Indonesia, and a former Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University. His book project, Cultivating Power: Botany and Empire in the Netherlands East Indies, is under contract with Cornell University Press. He is also developing a new project on water history and environmental dis:integration in Jakarta.
Attend virtually
Please contact m.g.w.reichgelt@hum.leidenuniv.nl if you wish to attend virtually.