Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to study the arduous journey made in 1779 by botanical productions transported by the vessel "Buen Suceso" from the vicereign of Peru to Lisbon and Madrid.

Paper long abstract:

In the Spring of 1778, the Spanish naturalists Ruiz and Pavón arrived to Peru where they commanded a botanical expedition until 1788.The first remittance sent by the botanical mission departed from Lima in 1779. But war with Britain prevented the vessel Buen Suceso from arriving at the península. The British sold part of its cargo in the port of Lisbon. Even the Spanish government arrived to recover part of the scientific remittances, that later became part of the "Flora Peruana", an additional part was carried to the Ajuda Botanical Garden. There, the botanical works were incorporated in the "Specimen Flora America Meridionalis", a four volume work with more than 300 designs and any other similar number of clasifications. The arduous journey gave us the opportunity to question narratives that just concern the use or not of the linnean system of classification in Southern Europe and their overseas territories. Instead, we can ask about the cultural meaning atribuited in diferent historical contexts and scientific spaces to the American plants and seeds that the Atlantic redistributed in both Iberian cities, after having passed through british hands. The comparison between the works produced in Lisbon and Madrid will allow us to constate what Neil Safier has stated for other contexts: colonial science was not merely produced in a narrow "contact zone" where "agents of empire" and their "imperial subjects" faced off in a rote and predetermined fashion. Instead knowledge emerged from a broad narrative involving multiples sites of collection and codification.