La diplomatie botanique : don, troc et échange d’objets végétaux au XIXe siècle

« Here are some fruit, some flowers, some leaves and some branches », French poet Paul Verlaine wrote in 1874. Discursively and concretely, plants have pride of place in everyday practices of gift-giving. At the political level, many examples show that botanical objects were frequently used as gifts. During the long 19th century, living plants, seeds and specimens are widely circulated within and between European empires. These transactions are often performed without using money, objects being offered, exchanged or bartered. Produced in botanical gardens, which are then central to colonial economies, plants and objects derived from them are fragile artefacts. Their often uncertain value is both symbolic and economic, since these objects are taken into a set of complex relationships between the scientific, mercantile, and political spheres. They testify to the ambiguity of inter-imperial scientific relations, marked by a constant tension between cooperation and rivalry. The case of the gifts offered in the 1820s by botanist Nathaniel Wallich (1785-1854) from the collections of the botanic garden in Calcutta illustrates the tensions and difficulties related to the use of objects derived from plants as a sort of currency contributing to the creation of a symbolic capital. This study explores the notion of « fragile diplomacy », the non-monetary circulation of desired objects the value of which is subject to unpredictable variations.