The document discusses the history of voyages of discovery from the 15th to 19th centuries. It describes how these voyages led to the rise of global trade in spices, the Columbian Exchange of plants, animals and diseases between the Old World and New World, the development of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Key figures discussed include Darwin, Wallace and Merian, whose voyages contributed to the development of biology, ecology and the theory of evolution through natural selection.

1. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
HISTORY OF NATURE
Detail from a map of Ortelius – Magellan’s ship Victoria. Source: Wikimedia

2. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
FOOD, SPICES AND GLOBALIZATION
Image: http://spiceworld.net.au

3. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
WHY WERE SPICES SO IMPORTANT?
▸ To preserve food?
▸ Medicine – including ‘aromatherapy’
▸ Linked to Humoral theory
▸ ALSO
▸ Objects of status and conspicuous consumption
▸ Culinary tastes
Cinnamon vendor (15th Century):
Valued for satisfying palettes but
also for healing disease. Image
from Le Moyen Age a table.

4. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
WHY WERE SPICES SO IMPORTANT?
▸ To preserve food?
▸ Medicine – including ‘aromatherapy’
▸ Linked to Humoral theory
▸ ALSO
▸ Objects of status and conspicuous consumption
▸ Culinary tastes
Cinnamon vendor (15th Century):
Valued for satisfying palettes but
also for healing disease. Image
from Le Moyen Age a table.

5. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE,
SPICES AND THEIR ORIGINS
▸ Geographic knowledge in
Medieval Europe was limited.
▸ Where spices came from was
known in a vague sense
centuries before the voyages
of Columbus.
https://br.pinterest.com/pin/181832903688276011/
Martin Behaim’s 1492 “Erdapfel” globe

6. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Source: BN France

7. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
▸ Dominated by the works of Classical Antiquity
▸ Nature conceived of as a “Great Chain of Being” [scala
naturae]
Historia Plantarum. Rome, Biblioteca
Casemates, Ms. 459. Source:
facsimile
fi
nder.com/

8. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
MEDIEVAL HERBALS
Image: http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/
tractatus-de-herbis.html
‣ Used to share and educate about
medicinal plants
‣ Eventually evolved into botany in the
14th through to 16th centuries CE

9. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
A printed map from the 15th century depicting Ptolemy's description of the Ecumene, (1482, Johannes Schnitzer, engraver).

10. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
PORTULAN MAPS AND THE CATALAN ATLAS

11. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE CATALAN ATLAS (1375)

12. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE
EXPLORATIONS, 1400-1600
Copyright © 1995-2005, Pearson Education, Inc

13. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

14. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
FIRST WAVE OF GLOBALIZATION
▸ By the late 1600s the Portuguese and Spanish, the
pioneers in global exploration, had been displaced
in many regions by the English, French, and Dutch.
▸ By mid 1500’s world was truly global
▸ 1594 – Francesco Carlotti departs on a slave-
trading mission and ends up travelling around the
world, “partly out of curiosity to see the world
and partly because of our interest in business.”
▸ Most of the voyage on annually scheduled
merchant routes.

15. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE
▸ Alfred Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange (1972)
▸ Many new spices, vegetables and fruits are brought back to Europe:
▸ Potatoes, pineapples; pimento peppers; chocolate; corn; maize;
▸ tomatoes; sweet potatoes; cassava
▸ Animals: turkeys, alpacas, guinea pigs (initially as food animals)
▸ Many European crops, plants and animals are brought to the New
World:
▸ Horses (which evolved in America), pigs, cattle, sheep, goats,
chickens
▸ Oranges, bananas, coffee, sugarcane, ginger
▸ This had a massive effect both economic and ecological
▸ Diseases: syphilis to Europe (from Yaws), yellow fever, measles and
smallpox to the Americas

16. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Estimates of the total population of the Americas on the
eve of the arrival of the
fi
rst Europeans have varied wildly,
from under 20 million to 80 million or more. … While the
totals will always be a matter of debate, there is no dispute
that the arrival of the Europeans brought demographic
catastrophe in its train, with losses of around 90 percent in
the century or so following the
fi
rst contact. … Forms of
sickness that in Europe were not necessarily lethal brought
devastating mortality rates to populations that had not
built up the immunity that would enable them to resist.
▸ Source: John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and
Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2006), 64–65.

17. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
"The seams of Pangaea were closing, drawn together
by the sailmaker's needle. Chickens met kiwis, cattle
met kangaroos, Irish met potatoes, Comanches met
horses, Incas met smallpox – all for the
fi
rst time.”
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900-1900 (1986: 131)

18. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE HAMMOCK

19. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Source: history.ubc.ca
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 1500-1888
(ABOLITION IN BRAZIL)

20. A Portuguese portolan chart of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent continents, 1633. Library of Congress.

21. Sea monsters attack a ship off the coast of India in Abraham Ortelius's 1571 Theatrum orbis terrarum. (British Library)

22. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
MARIA SYBELLA MERIAN (1647-1717)
AND THE ORIGINS OF FIELD ECOLOGY
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium , 1705

23. Branch of a Guava Tree with Leaf-cutter Ants, Army Ants,
Pink-toed Tarantulas, Huntsman Spiders, and a Ruby-topaz
Hummingbird, Maria Sibylla Merian, 1719
Plate 12 from ‘Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium’ (1705)
(courtesy Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt)

24. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE DISCOVERY OF THE
GREAT APES
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/stowed-away-emmanuel-fremiets-gorilla-carrying-off-a-woman-2-2/

26. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE ORANGUTAN
“Goat-footed Satyrs, Sphinges,
and frisky Fauns.
Not even boys believe in those.
But contemplate this
wonderful Monster
With a human face, so like
human-kind not only
In groaning, but also in wetting
the face with weeping.”
Jacobus Bontius, published posthumously in 1658
Image copyright the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (UK)

27. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
NICOLAES TULP (1593-1674)
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY IN AMSTERDAM

28. Edward Tyson’s Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a
Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man (1699)

29. VOYAGES, MUSEUMS,
COLLECTIONS AND
CLASSIFICATION

30. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
CABINETS OF CURIOSITY
Le cabinet de physique de Bonnier de
La Mosson, Jacque de Lajoue 1734 –
source wikicommons

31. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
Photo: kimwood.org

32. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Images: http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com.au

33. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Images: http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com.au

34. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
COLONIAL SCIENCE AND BOTANY
▸ But botany was never just a pure science, de
fi
ned by
taxonomic systems and plant descriptions
▸ Plants and botany were a driving force behind European
colonization and Imperialism.
▸ Big business and big science (Schiebinger 2009)
▸ Spices, Coffee, Cocao, sugar, tobacco, etc.
▸ Medicine (Quinine –
fi
rst effective treatment for malaria)

35. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
NASCENT ENVIRONMENTALISM
▸Richard Hugh Grove’s Green
Imperialism: Colonial
Expansion, Tropical Island
Edens and the Origins of
Environmentalism 1600–
1860 (1995)

36. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
SEXUALITY AND SOUTH SEAS ‘PARADISES’
▸ Tahiti described as earthly paradise and the natives living
an innocent life of sexual freedom
▸ Development of a strand of Romantic primitivism
blending exotic locales with erotic themes.
▸ These ideas about sexuality were part of the same ‘return
to nature’ idea which underlay early environmentalism
(and which continues to be present to the modern day)

37. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
19TH CENTURY VOYAGES AND EVOLUTION

38. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE
DECEMBER 1831 TO OCTOBER 1836

39. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
▸Co-discoverer of natural selection
▸Son of a grocer
▸Most remembered for having been
‘forgotten’ [he wasn’t]
▸Funded his explorations through
specimen collecting
Photo courtesy of George Beccaloni, of the London Natural History Museum

40. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
MAP OF WALLACE’S VOYAGE https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Map_of_Malay_Archipelago_Wallace_1869.jpg

41. “An antelope with shorter or weaker legs must necessarily suffer more from
the attacks of the feline carnivora; the passenger pigeon with less powerful
wings would sooner or later be affected in its powers of procuring a regular
supply of food . . . If, on the other hand, any species should produce a variety
having slightly increased powers of preserving existence, that variety must
inevitably in time acquire a superiority in numbers. . . . Now, let some
alteration of physical conditions occur in the district — a long period of
drought, a destruction of vegetation by locusts, the irruption of some new
carnivorous animal seeking "pastures new" . . . it is evident that, of all the
individuals composing the species, those forming the least numerous and
most feebly organized variety would suffer
fi
rst, and, were the pressure
severe, must soon become extinct.”
Alfred Russel Wallace, 1858
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

42. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY
WALLACE AND ORANGUTANS
“We had at this time in Sarawak the famous
naturalist, traveller, and philosopher, Mr Alfred
Wallace, who was then elaborating in his mind
the theory which was simultaneously worked
out by Darwin, the theory of the origin of
species; and if he could not convince us that our
ugly neighbours, the orang-outangs, were our
ancestors, he pleased, delighted, and instructed
us by his clever and inexhaustible
fl
ow of talk,
really good talk. The Rajah was pleased to have
so clever a man with him, as it excited his mind,
and brought out his brilliant ideas”
Source: van Wyhe, J. and Kjærgaard, P.C., 2015.
Going the whole orang: Darwin, Wallace and the
natural history of orangutans. Studies in History
and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in
History and Philosophy of Biological and
Biomedical Sciences, 51, pp.53-63.

44. Male and female of Wallace's
standard wing from Batchian, drawn
on wood by Dutch engraver John
Gerrard Keulemans.
Source: wikicommons.

45. SAGO WASHING

46. TIMOR MEN (from a photograph)
http://papuaweb.org/dlib/bk/wallace/book.html#ill-21