22609 Hamburg
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After the Economic Botany Collection (EBC) in Kew Gardens, London, Hamburg’s Applied Botany Collection (ABC) is the world’s second largest collection of economically and technologically significant plants (and plant parts). It encompasses around 45,000 objects, some of them more than 200 years old, in several sub-collections. The collection includes everything from tiny seeds to enormous fruits, influorescences and fibres; well-known and obscure medicinal plants; wood samples and rare phytopathological specimens. The German colonial period played a significant role in the origins of the collection. In particular, merchants from Hamburg had many contacts and outposts in these territories long before the official establishment of German colonies.
Approximately 10,000 objects in the collection originated in colonial contexts. Due to the highly diverse range of activities and widespread networks of the donors (who were scientists, companies, institutions, and professionals), nearly the entire colonial world is accounted for among their provenances. In regard to Africa, there is a preponderance of objects from the former German colonies of Togo, Cameroon, German Southwest Africa and German East Africa.
As with other colonial powers, one aim of German colonial policy and commerce in the colonies was to optimise the cultivation or alternative uses of plants that served as food or animal fodder, were of medical interest or could be harnessed as natural resources. These efforts partly relied on local plants that were already established in specific colonies; however, plants were also deliberately introduced from other parts of the world.
Generally, Europeans considered local botanical knowledge and indigenous forms of use and cultivation to be “unscientific” or even dismissed such knowledge and practices as harmful; they were only adopted insomuch as they served Europeans’ immediate interests. To this day, the effects of this ecological imperialism and early bio-piracy remain pervasive in the societies, cultures and natural environments of the countries of origin. Furthermore, despite all the international agreements, modern bio-prospecting has been suspected of repeating the past in a new, subtler guise.
We recognise great potential for cooperation and dialogue with representatives of the countries and societies of origin in order to break down Eurocentric presentation concepts and perspectives.