Introduction: rethinking Joseph Banks

Abstract

Following a series of workshops funded by AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), the papers in this special issue provide new perspectives on the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820). Moving beyond a focus on Banks s work with Captain Cook s first voyage of exploration to the Pacific, the papers expand on, while challenging, views of Banks as a ‘centre of calculation’ and all-powerful agent of science and imperialism in Georgian Britain. Banks is shown to have relied on a variety of expert men and women as actors and audiences for botany, operating with more diversified agendas and practices than previous pictures of him have suggested.