The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820

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Editor: Neil Chambers

The Pickering Masters

Following his participation in James Cook’s circumnavigation in HMS Endeavour (1768–71), Joseph Banks developed an extensive global network of scientists and explorers. His correspondence shows how he developed effective working links with the British Admiralty and with the generation of naval officers who sailed after Cook. He was familiar with most natural philosophers in Britain and across Europe, many of whom consulted his unrivalled collections of Pacific natural history and ethnology, and who shared specimens and information with him regarding the region. Banks also advised the British government and commercial enterprise in the development of successive ventures to India, the Far East and the Pacific. His career demonstrates how a private individual could influence global exploration in the Georgian era.

Banks’s correspondence is one of the great primary sources for studying the Pacific region during this important period of exploration and colonial expansion. His Indian and Pacific correspondence has not previously been published in a fully edited thematic series. This transcribed edition of over 2000 letters uses material from archives around the world. Together with The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks 1765–1820, this edition establishes Pickering & Chatto as the field leader in the publication of Joseph Banks’s edited papers and ensures that editorial standards are applied consistently across his published papers. It will be important for scholars researching the History of Science, Empire Studies, Eighteenth-Century Studies and Travel Literature.

• Includes over 2,000 letters
• Follows on from Pickering & Chatto’s highly successful The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks 1765–1820
• Correspondents include Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Edmund Burke, Captain James Cook, Nicholas Flinders, Benjamin Franklin, John Hunter, Samuel Johnson, Arthur Phillip, Joseph Priestley and Daniel Solander
• Editorial apparatus includes a substantial general introduction, detailed annotation, a calendar of correspondents and an index to each volume

Sample pages

• Constantine John Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave, to Sir Joseph Banks
• Daniel Solander to Sir Joseph Banks
• Sir Joseph Banks to Dr Benjamin Franklin

Contents

Correspondents include:
Jean Nicolas Sebastien Allamand, John Allen, Dr James Anderson, William Anderson, John Arnold, Sigismund Bacstrom, Sir George Baker, Sarah Sophia Banks, Robert Banks-Hodgkinson, Sir John Barrow, John Bayly, Ferdinand Bauer, John Albert Bentinck, Joseph Billings, Sir Charles Blagden, James Blake, Gregory and John Blaxland, William Bligh, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Comte de Bougainville, Matthew Boulton, Robert Brooke, Robert Brown, Dr Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, Comte de Buffon, William Bulmer, the Bunbury Committee, Peter Perez Burdett, Edmund Burke, George Caley, William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Bentinck (Duke of Portland), Charles Clerke, James Cook, the Reverend William Cooke, John Wilson Croker, Alexander Dalrymple, Jean-Nicolas Démeunier, Jan Deutz, George Dixon, Peter and John Dollond, James Douglas (Earl Of Morton), the Reverend John Douglas, Dr Alexander Duncan, Dr John Duncan, Henry Dundas, Andrew Dury, Richard Cadman Etches, Johann Christian Fabricius, Thomas Falconer, William Augustus Fawkener, Matthew Flinders, Johann Georg Adam Forster, Johann Reinhold Forster, John Fothergill, Benjamin Franklin, Dr Hugh Gillian, Peter Good, John Gore, John Grant, Henry Gregory, Margaret Eleanor Grenville, William Wyndham Grenville (Lord Grenville), Eleanor Gyles, James Harris (Earl Of Malmesbury), Edward Hasted, John Hawkesworth, Dr Thomas Henry, John Hope, Richard Howe (Earl Howe), Nathaniel Hulme, John Hunter, William Hunter, Jan Ingen-Housz, Charles Jenkinson (Baron Hawkesbury and Earl Of Liverpool), Samuel Johnson, James King, John King, Philip Gidley King, Johann Gerhard Koenig, Robert Kyd, Benjamin Lacam, David Lance, Comte de Lauraguais, James Lee, James Lind, John Gideon Loten, João De Loureiro, Andrew Lumisden, Sir George Macartney, Lachlan Macquarie, João Jacinto Magalhaens, Thomas Manning, John Marra, the Reverend Samuel Marsden, William Marsden, the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, Francis Masson, James Mario Matra, Archibald Menzies, John Frederick Miller, John Montagu (Earl Of Sandwich), Valentine Morris, Antonio Rolim de Moura (Conde D’Azambuja), Edward Nairne, the Navy Board, David Nelson, Evan Nepean, Johnson Newman, George Nicol, Omai, William Packover, Peter Simon Pallas, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, Sydney Parkinson, William Paterson, Robert Patton, Thomas Pennant, Dr Thomas Percival, William Philp Perrin, Arthur Phillip, Constantine John Phipps (Baron Mulgrave), William Henry Pigou, William Pitt the Younger, Friedrich August Zorn Von Plobsheim, Nathaniel Portlock, Henry Porteous, Joseph Priestley, Jesse Ramsden, John Reeves, James Robertson, Francis Robson, William Roxburgh, David Van Royen, Patrick Russell, Charles Green Say, Johann Friedrich Schiller, David Scott, Dr Helenus Scott, George Shaw, the Reverend William Sheffield, John Keyse Sherwin, Humphrey Sibthorp, Christopher Smith, John Sneyd, Daniel Solander, Pierre Sonnerat, Andreas Sparrman, George John Spencer (Lord Spencer), Johann Karl Philipp Spener, Sir George Leonard Staunton, Sir George Thomas Staunton, Joshua Steele, Sir Philip Stephens, Richard Stevens, William Strahan, James Strange, George Suttor, Edward Thompson, André Thouin, Carl Peter Thunberg, Thomas Townshend (Lord Sydney), George Vancouver, Domingos Vandelli, Dr Nathaniel Wallich, John Webber, William Westall, Nathan Wetherell, George Wombwell and Sir George Yonge

Subjects covered include:

• The Endeavour voyage, 1768–71
• Banks’s involvement in the published accounts of Cook’s voyages, 1771–1784
• Banks’s proposals for a settlement on the east coast of Australia, 1779–1785
• Banks’s advice regarding the mounting of the ‘First Fleet’ under Captain Arthur Phillip RN to found a colony at Sydney Cove, 1788, and his support for New South Wales up to 1820
• Banks’s supervision of the two breadfruit voyages of William Bligh RN, 1787–93
• The East India Company, 1779–1820
• African and Indian Affairs, 1786–1820
• Banks’s involvement in early fur-trading ventures to the northwest coast of America and Captain George Vancouver’s survey voyage of 1791–94
• Banks’s assistance in the mounting of the Macartney Embassy to China, 1792–4
• Banks’s encouragement and guidance in the coastal surveys of Australia, notably those by Captain Matthew Flinders RN, 1795–1800
• Banks’s plans for the epic voyage of HMS Investigator and the scientific party that he selected to sail on it, 1800–1805
• Banks’s organization of the collectors and observers that were regularly dispatched on naval missions sent to the Pacific. His sorting, distribution and management of the collections made on the voyages and missions that were mounted, and his support of the publication of the accounts of these missions afterwards up to 1820

Related titles

• Joseph Banks and the British Museum : The World of Collecting 1770–1830
• The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765–1820

Leaflets

• The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks: colour leaflet
• The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks: printable leaflet

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