The Slave Trade and Natural Science

Abstract

Separately, the natural sciences and the slave trade have been the subject of extensive scholarship, yet only recently have scholars begun to examine them together. Such research reveals that slavery and the transatlantic slave trade shaped the science of the Atlantic world as deeply as it influenced its economy and demographics. The unfree migration of 11 million enslaved Africans via the transatlantic slave trade also led to the movement of plants, animals, diseases, and natural knowledge throughout the Atlantic basin. Encounters between diverse groups of people and with unfamiliar environments engendered new natural and medical knowledge. Enslaved Africans made significant contributions to Atlantic science as specimen collectors, guides, and informants. Specimens collected in slave societies and along the routes of the slave trade became part of European museums and thus the raw materials upon which much European natural science was based. Although colonial and European naturalists frequently disparaged and feared the natural knowledge of enslaved Africans, they also eagerly sought it out, believing that blacks had special access to certain categories of knowledge. The knowledge and practices of Atlantic science also bolstered colonialism and the institution of slavery. Naturalists, especially those interested in economic botany, sought new natural commodities to increase the profitability of the colonial project. Other naturalists were engaged in explaining the causes of physical differences between groups of people. The hardening of racial categories in the late 18th century was often framed in the language of the natural sciences and supported through references to scientific texts. Scientific texts and scientists themselves were also involved in late-18th- and early-19th-century debates over the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. Apologists on both sides marshalled evidence from natural histories, travel accounts, medical treatises, and other scientific texts in support of their arguments.