Collecting and cataloguing the world: the botanical collections of Hans Sloane (1660–1753)
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2025-02-17
Submitted Date
2024-10-01
Subject Terms
historical collections
limits of data
manuscript catalogues
provenance
Sloane
limits of data
manuscript catalogues
provenance
Sloane
Collections
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Abstract
Botanical collections assembled before the widespread adoption of the ‘Linnaean’ system of binomial naming often have nomenclatural significance, are increasingly utilized to investigate genetic and environmental change, and are important sources for the history of science and medicine. However, such early collections may be difficult to access and interpret, and few have machine-readable metadata or images. The natural history collections of Hans Sloane (1660–1753), assembled between the 1680s and his death in 1753, constitute the de facto foundation collections of the Natural History Museum, London. This study analyses Sloane’s Herbarium and ‘Vegetable Substances’ which make up the largest surviving components of Sloane’s natural history materials and the largest pre-Linnaean botanical collection in existence. The collections contain specimens contributed by hundreds of people from over 70 countries and territories worldwide. New data sets are presented that enable novel research and a comparison of their parts. The data provide details of the people and places mentioned in these sources, along with a complete transcription of the Vegetable Substances catalogue, and new folio-level metadata for the entire Herbarium. The results provide precise estimates of the scale of the collections (8812 surviving specimens of the Vegetable Substances, and 121 506 specimens in the herbarium) and demonstrate their heterogeneity, reflecting their complex histories. Aspects of the collections’ histories can be read from the data and reveal some of the organization and management practices that shaped the collections as we have them today. However, we show that there is frequent ambiguity and uncertainty in the provenance of specimens, while the human histories connected with their assembly are often opaque, embedded in the trading networks of colonialism and enslavement. These data permit analyses of the collections at scale for the first time, yet also suggest that multi-disciplinary approaches are required to fully unlock such historical collections.
Citation
Scott, B., Pickering, V., Coulton, R., Nyhan, J., & Carine, M. (2025). Collecting and cataloguing the world: the botanical collections of Hans Sloane (1660–1753). Systematics and Biodiversity, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2025.2455440
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Copyright © 2025 The Trustees of the Natural History Museum. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permitsunrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow theposting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. The linked file is the published version of the article.
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ISSN
1477-2000
EISSN
1478-0933