Digging up Colonial Roots

Abstract

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP) at Wakehurst place in West Sussex, England is the largest repository of wild plant seeds in the world. According to their self-published institutional history, the MSBP was created to take on the mantle of global biodiversity conservation at a moment of ecological crisis. I study the bio-politics of the recasting of Kew’s role as arbiter of colonial botanical knowledge to keeper of botanical futures through seed banking. While the MSBP is a part of Kew’s vision to stay at the cutting edge of conservation and environmental governance, its relationship to colonial botany and political economy must also be interrogated in the light of its legacy. I revivify the origin story of the MSBP to show how Kew Gardens’ long tradition of plant extraction, accumulation, and exchange, as well as nationalist zeal motivated by the potential loss of ‘native species,’ were integral to the ‘rebranding’ of Kew as the MSBP.