The final section of the first portion of comps prep has the longest title, and the longest entry. These books are mainly a cross section of methodologies used in framing historical accounts of Natural History in America. The best part about looking at these different approaches is that the content was generally useful as well. They also criss cross the same time periods, geographies and often the same people.
Can a book only 11 years old be a classic? If any work can claim to be such it is surely Fa-ti Fan’s British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter. This is a huge geographic and political shift from the previous books that have dealt with India and British India. I make that point because it is important to remember that the earliest relationships with China were undertaken pretty much under Chinese terms. Even following the end of the Opium Wars and the forceful opening of trading ports China was never a colony under the British Crown.
Continue reading British Naturalists in Qing China
David Elliston Allen’s 1976 social history of the naturalist in Britain is by all accounts “a classic.” Interestingly enough it was republished in 1994 by Princeton University Press from its original Penguin Books which brings into the question the relationship of popular press vs rigorous (inflated pricing) of university presses, but you can take that up on your own.
Continue reading That Naturalist in Britain
