Sex, Botany and Empire (Icon Science): The Story of Carl Linnaeus and

'A man would not naturally expect to meet with disgusting strokes of obscenity in a system of botany, but.obscenity is the very basis of the Linnean system.' Encyclopaedia Britannica (18th Century). When the imperial explorer James Cook returned from his first voyage to Australia, the scandal writers mercilessly satirised the amorous exploits of his botanist, Joseph Banks, whose trousers were reportedly stolen while he was inside the tent of Queen Oberea of Tahiti. But Enlightenment botany was full of sexual symbolism: Carl Linnaeus's controversial new system for classifying plants was based on their sexual characteristics, and the dangerously gendered language of flowers resonated with erotic allusions. In Sweden and Britain, both imperial powers, Linnaeus and Banks ruled over their own small scientific empires, promoting botanical exploration to justify exploiting territories, peoples and natural resources. Regarding native peoples with disdain, these two scientific emperors portrayed the Arctic North and the Pacific Ocean as uncorrupted Edens free from the shackles of Western convention. Patricia Fara reveals how, barely concealed under Banks's and Linneaus's camouflage of noble Enlightenment, were the altogether more seedy drives to conquer, subdue and deflower in the name of the British imperial State.