Bioprospecting in the Eighteenth-Century

What is it about?

This article focuses on three unique products circulating in eighteenth-century marketplace - castor, mammoth tusks, and asbestos – and highlights the role of naturalists working for the Royal Society in London and at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in promoting the consumption of these goods. When these Siberian markets reached European markets, naturalists explored their origins and suggested potential uses. When these products were later discovered in the British colonies, the scientific debates between London and St. Petersburg only gained new urgency, inspiring arguments about authenticity and efficaciousness.

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Photo by April Pethybridge on Unsplash

Photo by April Pethybridge on Unsplash

Why is it important?

For castor, tusks, and asbestos, naturalists from multiple countries, employed by Britain and Russia, were deeply enmeshed in the production of knowledge. This was not an abstract process of discovering new information to further science, but deliberate investigations of products that held commercial value, which scholars frame as “bioprospecting.” In each case, this was not driven by the ability to discover new products as much as to find replacements or alternatives to existing ones.

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