I am a scholar working at the intersection of ecocriticism, digital humanities, and Latin American studies. Within these disciplines, I am particularly interested in the analysis and critique of the practices of representation and curation of nonhuman species in the Global South in digital archives specifically in Latin America. Thus, in my research, I seek to track the “(hi)stories” of specific species—and their travels in the (post)colonial world—as they are told by and omitted from online archives.[1] In particular, I look at Latin American materials in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This latter is an online open-access library that compiles global literature about biodiversity. In so doing, I advocate for more plural, equitable, and decolonizing archival practices in topics of biodiversity.
In this short piece, I share my work through the example of Bertholletia excelsa, commonly known as the Brazil nut. This species received its scientific name when it was identified by Aimé Bonpland and Alexander von Humboldt during their trip to the Americas between 1799 and 1804.[2] Nevertheless, Brazil nuts—endemic to the Orinoco River region—had been exported since the early 17th century by the Dutch, who continued to prolifically send seeds to Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. After the opening of “Brazilian ports […] to free trade” in 1866, the British Crown sought to cultivate the Brazil nut in their colonies.[3] In 1881, Bertholletia excelsa was imported by the Botanical Department of Jamaica and was later introduced into the British “Eastern and Australian Colonies,” particularly Queensland and Singapore, a project that, in 1887, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew saw as “in every way […] desirable,” especially as this dependency considered itself to be “a ‘half-way house’ between the two tropics.”[4]
These travel (hi)stories of Bertholletia excelsa go hand in hand with the (hi)stories of the colonization of the Global South and are also present in the collections of BHL. In this regard, an analysis of the metadata of materials in BHL that include the scientific name Bertholletia excelsa reveal these (hi)stories of colonization and their permanence in the (colonial) biodiversity-related record of digital archives.[5] For instance, the places of publication of these 680 materials are mostly located in Europe and the United States, with London being at the top (153 titles, 23.53%), followed by New York (57 titles, 8.77%) and Paris (42 titles, 6.46%) (Figure 1).
Interestingly, however, the data also show locations in the Global South as places of publication of these materials, including several titles published in Latin America (Figure 2). In the region, Brazil is the most important place of publication with 16 titles (2.35%) published in three sites: Pará/Belém, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, all after the independence of the country in the early 19th century. Despite that the presence of knowledge production about Bertholletia excelsa from Brazil in BHL is significantly lower than production from the Global North, the importance of Brazil as a post-colonial epistemic agent in matters related to this species remains notable.
Nonetheless, this is not the case for places of publication of materials about Bertholletia excelsa in the Global South outside of Latin America. Such places, on the contrary, continue to reveal the colonial nature of BHL’s records: The majority were British colonies at the time of publication (Figure 3). Unlike Brazil, then, and given not only the place of publication of these materials but the specific context of their production, these places cannot be considered post-colonial epistemic agents. On the contrary, they stand as sites of production of knowledge affiliated with the Global North and, therefore, with coloniality. While these places are “represented” in the metadata, the temporality of these record re-colonizes their presence in BHL by stigmatizing them as colonies.
In addition to places of publication, language adds another layer to the coloniality of these materials. English is by far the most frequent language of publication, with 394 records (61.66%), followed by German with 139 (21.75%), and French with 55 (8.61%). Together, these three languages account for 92.02% of the records about Bertholletia excelsa in BHL, largely dominating the knowledge production about the Brazil nut, especially during the 19th century and more clearly prior to 1880. Moreover, English almost exclusively dominates the publications in the 20th and 21st centuries (Figure 4).
As shown on the graph, a considerable decrease in the number of publications about Bertholletia excelsa characterizes the 20th and 21st centuries, hinting at the reduced interest in this species in the post-colonial Global North. After Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822, “Britain enjoyed a truly strong position in the country,” which lasted until around 1900, when “the British position in Brazil [was] challenged mostly by the growing influence of Germany”, with British economic interests and influence lasting until “after the world economic depression of 1929-33.[6] The records of BHL mirror this historical context as the reduced influence of the British in Brazil after the 19th century could explain the decrease of publications in more recent times.
As seen by the metadata extracted from BHL, the (hi)stories of Bertholletia excelsa, as told by the Library, are the (hi)stories of the British empire. In these records, London is the most frequent place of publication especially between 1830 and 1930. Other places of publication in the Global South were British colonies at the time of publication; and the metadata show a clear decrease in the number of publications in modern times. Consequently, it is possible to conclude that the knowledge production about Bertholletia excelsa present in BHL is overwhelmingly Euro- and Anglocentric.
The metadata of materials in the BHL that include the scientific name Bertholletia excelsa demonstrate that the (hi)stories of this species are told through the lens of the Global North, perpetuating the epistemic coloniality of this species and the human groups that relate to it. The travel stories of the Brazil nut as told by the BHL are, in reality, the colonial (hi)stories of the Global North as producer of knowledge and the Global South as object of study and subject to coloniality. While I continue to recognize the value of BHL as an open-access resource for researchers across the globe, the Library is still part of a long history of epistemic coloniality and violence, inherited from the imperial and colonial nature of archives. I believe that acknowledging and contending colonial biases in knowledges of biodiversity are fundamental steps towards equitable, sustainable, and fair bio-diverse coexistence and archives. That is precisely the goal of my research and my collaboration with BHL, to understand the gaps, silences, omissions, and biases of so-called globality and openness, so that we can develop decolonial and inclusive archival practices that counteract these shortcomings.[7] I hope to continue such work and contribute to efforts to decolonize online knowledges of biodiversity.
[1] I use the concept of (hi)stories to highlight both the historical and narrative nature of biodiversity-related knowledge production and the storytelling that happens through digital archives such as BHL.
[2] Paul Anthony Jones, “Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Brazil Nut,” in Around the World in 80 Words: A Journey through the English Language (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 212; Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland. Sixième Partie, Botanique. Plantes Équinoxiales Recueillies Au Mexique, Dans l’île de Cuba, Dans Les Provinces de Caracas, de Cumana et de Barcelone, Aux Andes de La Nouvelle Grenade, de Quito et Du Pérou, et Sur Les Bords Du Rio-Negro de Orénoque et de La Rivière Des Amazones., vol. 1 (Paris: F. Schoell, 1808), 124–27.
[3] Richard Evans Schultes, “Gifts of the Amazon Flora to the World,” Arnoldia 50, no. 2 (1990): 23; Scott A. Mori and Ghillean T. Prance, “Taxonomy, Ecology, and Economic Botany of the Brazil Nut (Bertholletia Excelsa Humb. & Bonpl.: Lecythidaceae),” Advances in Economic Botany, New Directions in the Study of Plants and People: Research Contributions from the Institute of Economic Botany, 8 (1990): 134.
[4] Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, “Introduction of the Brazil Nut to the East Indies and Australia. (Bertholletia Excelsa, Humb.),” Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) 1887, no. 12 (1887): 11-12.
[5] BHL offers the possibility of searching and downloading metadata of materials in its catalogue by scientific name. The search results discussed here are as of January 2022. The complete file is available on my GitHub.
[6] Eugenio Vargas Garcia, Anglo-American Rivalry in Brazil: The Case of the 1920s, Working Paper Series (Oxford, UK: University of Oxford. Centre for Brazilian Studies, 2000), 4.
[7] I have had the privilege of working with BHL staff on various occasions to share my insight regarding their collections. I first wrote a blog post for their website in 2020, see “Towards Online Decoloniality: Globality and Locality in and through the BHL,” Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog (September 1, 2020). This short piece was followed by a keynote address during BHL’s annual meeting in 2021, titled “Decolonizing Strategies for an Equitable Biodiversity Heritage Library,” and an internship during the summer of that same year. As part of this internship, I wrote two more blog posts presenting my findings and my recommendations for BHL, see “Understanding BHL Through Metadata: Patterns of Bio-Diverse Knowledge Production,” Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog (November 16, 2021) and “The Geopolitics of Metadata: Knowing Panama Through the Biodiversity Heritage Library,” Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog (November 18, 2021). Additionally, I collaborated with BHL’s Collections Committee in the development of the Library’s acknowledgment of harmful content, see Bianca Crowley, “Acknowledging Harm, Rethinking Collections,” Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog (October 13, 2021); Biodiversity Heritage Library, “Acknowledgment of Harmful Content – About BHL” (September 2021). Finally, several of my datasets were made available through BHL’s GitHub.
*Cover image: Picture of Bertholletia excelsa from Isaac Bayley Balfour, Vernon H. Blackman, and Roland Thaxter, Annals of Botany, vol. 15, 1901.
[*Cover image description: a black and white drawing of a Brazil nut, partially peeled, with branches and leaves growing on top.]
Edited by Lívia Regina Batista, reviewed by Asmae Ourkiya.