IN THE LILLIPUTIA N WORLD OF INSECTS, the seventeenth century was one of seismic change. They were no longer ignored or seen mainly as symbols for everything from industry to sinfulness; instead they had found their way into starring roles in contexts ranging from display cabinets in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, to learned books and paintings. Like so many of the places seen as newly discovered, insects had always been there; what had changed was the nature of human awareness and perception of them.

In territories across the globe they were still sources of food and medicine and featured in local narratives and art, but the great enterprise of collecting and organising the information being assembled by travellers and explorers was reducing much of that historical relationship to passing references or anecdotal information. The Linnaean system of naming flora and fauna was gaining traction among collectors, and the desire to own new and unidentified specimens was helping to fuel the expansion of private collections. However, it is one thing to start collecting beetles or shells (or indeed anything that catches the eye) but as anybody who has walked on a beach and collected a bag of shells knows, they don't have the same allure once removed from the shore, unless they are displayed or used for some purpose.

Collectors faced a number of problems, not the least of which was what to do with their collections after their death. Having spent years assembling unique collections of exotic material, often at great cost, the thought of everything being disbanded or (worse still) disposed of by disinterested heirs was not to be countenanced.

Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), one of the great collectors of his age, found a profitable and enduring solution by bequeathing his very substantial collection of 71 000 objects to King George II ‘for the nation’ on condition of a payment of £20 000 to his heirs.

Sloane was a medical doctor who had dedicated his book on the natural history of Jamaica to Queen Anne, describing the 11 000km2 island as ‘the largest and most considerable of Her Majesty's plantations in America.’ Implicit in this is a world in which monarchs owned entire countries, and an island was merely a plantation as opposed to a sovereign territory.