The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) is one of the oldest scientific societies of India, founded in 1883. It works to spread awareness about nature through science-based research, conservation advocacy, education, scientific publications, nature tours and other programmes. The society holds over 120,00 specimens for research and study, and is currently digitizing collections, to make them more accessible and help in their preservation. Collaborators will compare holdings at the BHNS with the Forbes material, to gain a better understanding of the historical environment of Western India. BHNS and McGill institutions will also share expertise relating to the digitization of natural history collections.
The Blacker Wood Natural History Collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of natural history works in North America. The collection consists of rare books, manuscripts, archival material, and original artwork relating to vertebrate zoology, in particular ornithology, with significant materials in mammalogy, ichthyology, and comparative anatomy. In addition, the collection holds important works in the history and philosophy of natural history, evolution, botany, zoogeography, and the records of scientific expeditions. The holdings relevant to this case study are the collection of zoological paintings by James Forbes. These can be accessed via the archival collections catalogue – https://archivalcollections.library.mcgill.ca/index.php/forbes-zoological-drawings.
The Yale Center for British Art, Rare Books and Manuscripts Repository holds approximately 35,000 volumes. The collection represents a broad range of material relating to the visual arts and cultural life in the United Kingdom and the former British Empire, dating from the fifteenth century to the present. The collection includes the James Forbes archive (https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/2/resources/11734). The Forbes archive comprises thirteen manuscript volumes, each of which contains numerous illustrations as well as transcriptions of letters originally composed while Forbes was in India, with a particular concentration on the natural history of India. The manuscript was finished in 1800, although most of the drawings are those done at the time of the voyage, circa 1765-1776. Volume 1 includes a presentation page, dated 11 April 1800, in which Forbes gives the set to his daughter, Elizabeth Rosée Forbes. Elizabeth would later edit and revise the second edition of Forbes’s Oriental memoirs (1834).
McGill University is on land which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst Indigenous peoples, including the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabeg nations. We acknowledge and thank the diverse Indigenous peoples whose presence marks this territory on which peoples of the world now gather.
Hidden Hands in Colonial Natural Histories 