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True rhubarb? Trading Eurasian botanical and medical knowledge in the eighteenth century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Matthew P. Romaniello
Matthew P. Romaniello*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Hawai’i, 2530 Dole Street, Sakamaki A203, Honolulu, HI 96822-2383, USA E-mail: mpr@hawaii.edu
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Abstract

Early modern Russia sat at the intersection of Eurasian trade networks, which allowed both commodities and information to move from east to west and north to south. Rhubarb exported from China had held a prominent position in Western medical treatments since the classical era, but improved transportation and communication between Europe and Asia through Russia enabled the growth of the medicinal rhubarb trade to unexpected heights after 1760. Earlier studies of rhubarb have focused on European interests in uncovering ‘true’ medicinal rhubarb, but this article will situate the plant as a part of the broader process of scientific exchange across Eurasia. Russia’s unique position in Eurasia ultimately allowed its specialists to contribute to the development of Western science through the importation of information from Asia and its own expeditions in Siberia, Russia’s internal ‘Asian’ territory.

Keywords

bioprospectingbotanydrug tradeknowledge networksmedicinerhubarb

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Articles
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Journal of Global History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 3 - 23
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Critical Silk Road Seminar at Georgetown University in January 2015. I thank the participants of that forum, as well as the editors and the reviewers for the Journal of Global History, for their comments.

References

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26 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 130–1.

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38 ‘The Sound Toll register’, http://www.soundtoll.nl/index.php/en/over-het-project/str-online/ (consulted 30 October 2014). For a brief discussion of rhubarb imports in the seventeenth century, see Wallis, ‘Exotic drugs’, pp. 31–2.

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41 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (The complete collection of the laws of the Russian empire), Series 1, 45 vols, St Petersburg, 1830, vol. 7, no. 5110, 26 June 1727, pp. 819–21. Foust, Rhubarb, pp. 55–7, details the decree.

42 ‘Sound Toll register’.

43 Polnoe sobranie zakonov, vol. 8, no. 5741, 8 April 1731, p. 450.

44 Foust, Rhubarb, pp. 56–8.

45 ‘Sound Toll register’. Foust, Rhubarb, pp. 55–7, also notes this period of increased volume, based on the London port records.

46 Shiffner is ‘Sheffner’ or ‘Sheffer’ in the archival documents. For a discussion of Shiffner and Wolff’s business operations, see Cross, Anthony, By the banks of the Neva: chapters from the lives and careers of the British in eighteenth-century Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 55–58Google Scholar.

47 The National Archives, United Kingdom (henceforth TNA), State Papers: Russia (henceforth SP 91), 19, ‘Rondeau to Samuel Holden’, 27 December 1735, ff. 6–9. Foust, Rhubarb, p. 260, n. 62, refers to the Chitty affair as ‘somewhat mysterious and seems to have died without resolution’, which is not the case.

48 TNA, SP 91/19, ‘Copy of Chitty’s petition’, 24 May 1736, ff. 80–6.

49 TNA, SP 91/19, ‘Rondeau’s answer to Chitty’s petition’, 10 July 1736, ff. 143–50.

50 TNA, CO 389/29, ‘Report to the Lords of the Commerce Council upon Mr. Chitty’s petition’, 27 May 1736, ff. 213–14. The Russian government also supported Shiffner and Wolff’s innocence: TNA, SP 91/19, ‘Memorial from Osterman’, in Russian f. 151r., in French translation f. 152r.

51 TNA, SP 91/20, ‘Verdict in Chitty affair’, 11 August 1736, f. 15r–v.

52 Senatskii arkhiv (Senate archive), 15 vols., St Petersburg: Senatskaia tipografiia, 1888–1913, vol. 5, pp. 396–411, 20 August 1742. Foust, Rhubarb, pp. 66–7, discusses this in greater detail.

53 ‘Sound Toll register’.

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57 The British government received this guarantee in 1756, but it was immediately violated as Russia entered the war on the side of the French. See, for example, TNA, SP 91/60, ‘Note given to Hanbury-Williams from the Russian Chancellors’, 12 March 1756, ff. 164–5.

58 TNA, Treasury, T 64/241, ‘An account of the exports of British manufactures from Scotland to Holland Germany and Russia distinguishing each year, and the species of goods and the quantities and values to each of the said countries for forty years, preceding January 1772’.

59 TNA, CO 388/49, ‘Bute to Lords Commissioners of Trade’, 17 August 1761, f. 92; ‘Mr. Wood to Lords Commissioners’, 19 September 1761, ff. 124–5; ‘Counter-project of a treaty of commerce with Russia’, 11 November 1761, ff. 139–51.

60 TNA, SP 91/71, ‘Buckinghamshire to Hallifax’, 28 February 1763, ff. 117–20.

61 Foust, Rhubarb, pp. 63–72.

62 This was part of an extensive review of export taxes. Senatskii arkhiv, vol. 12, pp. 150–67, 18 and 22 April, and 20 May 1762, pp. 150–67 (rhubarb is noted on pp. 155–6).

63 ‘Sound Toll register’.

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65 For a discussion of the acclimatization process, see H. K. Roessingh, ‘Tobacco growing in Holland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a case study of the innovative spirit of Dutch peasants’, in The Low Countries history yearbook 1978, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979, pp. 18–54. For a British estimate of production levels, see TNA, CO 389/19, ‘Report to the House of Commons’, 19 November 1707, ff. 181–297, esp. 243–5.

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67 Peter Simon Pallas originally published his writings in German, as Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs, 3 vols., St Petersburg, 1771–76. He later published a complete record of all of his travels across the empire in French, Voyages de M. P. S. Pallas, en différentes provinces de l’empire de Russie, et dans l’Asie septentrionale, trans. Gauthier de la Peyronie, 5 vols., Paris: Maradan, 1788–93. Johann Gottlieb Georgi also published his account in German, Bemerkungen einer Reise im Russischen Reich im Jahre 1772, St Petersburg, 1775; it was translated into English, as Russia: or, a compleat historical account of all the nations which compose that empire, trans. William Tooke, 4 vols., London, 1780–83. Though Pallas’ work was not formally translated into English, some of his text was included in William Coxe, Account of the Russian discoveries between Asia and America, 3rd edn, London: J. Nichols, 1787, particularly the chapter on rhubarb, pp. 351–63.

68 Georgi, Russia, vol. 4, p. 34.

69 Ibid., vol. 4, p. 40.

70 The adoption of moxa in Great Britain and the Netherlands has been discussed in Rosen, George, ‘Sir William Temple and the therapeutic use of moxa for gout in England’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 44, 1970, pp. 31–39Google Scholar; and Lux, David S. and Cook, Harold J., ‘Closed circles or open networks? Communicating at a distance during the scientific revolution’, History of Science, 36, 1998, pp. 183–184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 For example, see the Russian American Company’s plan to improve its Pacific trade options, in Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Yudin Collection of Russian-American Company Records, Box 1, folder 11, ‘Memo by N. Rezanov’, 20 July 1806, ff. 176–85.

72 This idea follows from the work of Lux and Cook, who investigated the importance of trust and family connections as part of the exchange of scientific knowledge in the early modern period in their article ‘Closed circles and open networks’.

73 Appleby, ‘British doctors’; Wills, Jacobites and Russia, pp. 41–55.

74 National Records of Scotland (henceforth NRS), Papers of the Shairp family of Houston, West Lothian, GD30, 1583/3, ‘Letter from Walter Shairp’, 16 September 1749.

75 NRS, Botanical papers of John Hope MD professor of botany and materia medica at Edinburgh, GD253/144/5/1, ‘Letter from John Bell of Antermony’, 1 June 1765.

76 NRS, GD253/144/5/2, ‘Letter from John Bell of Antermony’, 10 June 1765.

77 NRS, GD253/144/5/5, ‘Letter from Professor Pallas’, 18 May 1777. Pallas’ criticism of Siberian harvesting practices echoed complaints from the government in the 1650s. See Monahan, ‘Trade and empire’, p. 370.

78 NRS, GD253/144/5/10, ‘Price of rhubarb’.

79 Coxe, Account of the Russian discoveries, p. 355.

80 Ibid., pp. 351–2.

81 Ibid., pp. 354–5.

82 Ibid., p. 363.

83 Ibid., p. 362.

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85 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

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87 NRS, GD253/144/3/25, ‘Seeds from China’ (author unknown).

88 NRS, GD253/145/7/10, ‘Letter from Matthew Guthrie’, 20 June 1778. An abbreviated version of this letter was published in Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 5, part 1, 1778, pp. 434–6. Margery Rowell, ‘Medicinal plants’, p. 88, points out that the chrysanthemum plant was first observed in Wilhelm Steller’s notes from the Second Kamchatka Expedition earlier in the century.

89 Appleby, ‘British doctors’, pp. 358–65.

90 NRS, Letters, various versions of botanical description of asafoetida, GD253/144/2/1, ‘Dr. Pallas’s notes’, f. 2.

91 NRS, GD253/144/2/1, ‘Letter from Matthew Guthrie’, 16 August 1777, f. 1.

92 NRS, GD253/144/2/7, ‘Names of gentlemen to whom seeds of the Asa foetida were sent ’82’, February 1783.

93 British Library, Additional Manuscripts 33,554, Bentham Papers, vol. 18, Miscellaneous Papers, ff. 29v–30v, 20 January 1782.

94 Pharmacopoea Rossica, St Petersburg, 1782; Peter Simon Pallas, Flora Rossica seu Stirpium Imperii Rossici per Europam et Asiam indigenarum descriptiones, 2 vols., Frankfurt: Ioannem Georgium Fleischer, 1789.

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98 TNA, Russia: Letters and papers supplementary, FO 97/342, ‘Charles Whitworth to Lord Grenville’, 19 October 1793, f. 69v.

99 ‘Sound Toll register’.

100 Foust, Rhubarb, pp. 213–20; Monahan, ‘Locating rhubarb’, pp. 237–41.

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102 NRS, GD253/144/5/5, ‘Letter from Professor Pallas’, 18 May 1777.

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