In the 1830s, a natural history museum and herbarium was founded in Istanbul, within the Ottoman Imperial Medical College complex in Galata Sarayı. The few accounts (mostly by botanists) written on the history of the establishment and management of the herbarium and museum consider its history in the context of the colonial ambitions of European actors and employ the concept of “westernization,” implying the asymmetrical influence of European technology, values and knowledge over the Ottoman realm, leading to the imitation and copying of European ways of imperial administration. This chapter, by contrast, argues that the first herbarium and natural history museum within Ottoman territories functioned as a hub where doctors, scientists, plant collectors and bureaucrats from the Ottoman Empire and from different parts of Europe (including Russia) formed an inter-imperial network to pursue scientific, but also political and economic interests. It emphasizes that relations in the network were characterized by conflict, cooperation and negotiation between different human and non-human actors. Relationships were dialectic rather than shaped by the asymmetries of westernization.
2020 IEEE European Technology and Engineering Management Summit (E-TEMS) [Copyright notics]
