Ethnographic collecting and the despotism of Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks has been considered an unproblematic agent of imperial science; a figure unique for his ability and willingness to direct British expeditionary exploration and the collection of natural history. Borrowing from claims, first made in 1784, that Banks’s influence and power might better be described as a form of ‘despotism’, this article instead contends that Banks consciously subverted the expansive system of imperial collecting then favoured by the British state. I argue that the contemporary collection of ethnographic specimens, officially sought by and beyond the Royal Society since the voyages of James Cook, suffered particularly at the hands of Banksian indifference and botanical enthusiasm. Using as a case study the early nineteenth-century Australian surveying voyages of the Lady Nelson, I call to attention an overlooked cast of sailors, smugglers, and politicians in order to examine how Banks's pursuit of plants therefore constituted a threat to both imperial order and colonial discipline.