O imperio botanico: as politicas portuguesas para a flora de Bahio Atlantica Colonial (1768 - 1808). 2016. 5 maps. 386 p. gr8vo. Paper bd. - In Portuguese.

In the second half of the 18th century, the natural world was the object of Natural History - or Natural Philosophy, as the Portuguese preferred. The portion destined to the study of the vegetal world within this great scientific field was botany. Cataloging and analyzing plants, trees, herbs, bark, roots, seeds and other forms of plant life, botany stood out as one of the most important sciences of the modern period. Several European imperial states stimulated the development of botany, which enabled a close relationship between knowledge and power in colonial dynamics. Botany as an imperial agent reorganized the relations between political power, knowledge about the natural environment and its technical applications in the service of the modern state, reinforcing colonial relations overseas.

This book is a study of the instrumentalization of botany by the Portuguese Crown in formulating colonial policies for the flora of Atlantic Bahia in the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The reader is confronted with a narrative that sheds light on destroyed forests, forgotten naturalists, monumental floristic inventories, daring expeditions, controversial theses, Botanical Gardens, intrigues, clientelism, and an overseeing Crown. It will undoubtedly be an unconventional reading about the history of colonial Bahia and its relations with the Portuguese Empire.