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ABSTRACT
As a young man Joseph Banks (1743–1820), a wealthy landowner, decided to devote his life to natural history. He became one of the best-known naturalist explorers of the eighteenth century. During his twenties, from 1766 to 1772, he went on three voyages of exploration: to Labrador and Newfoundland in 1766, on the Endeavour circumnavigation with James Cook in 1768–71 and, finally, in 1772, he led the first British scientific expedition to Iceland. It was these expeditions, undertaken as a young man, which shaped his life. From them he gained fame, becoming one of the country’s most powerful and leading naturalists. This article also discusses the question of whether he was a scientist? He certainly believed himself to be one and according to the standards of the eighteenth century he was one, and people must be judged by the standard of their age. In the modern sense of the word, without a university degree and with negligible publications in his lifetime, he was not one. His eventual strength lay in his influential position as President of the Royal Society, a friend of George III and a privy councillor, allowing him to organise new voyages of discovery and send botanists on missions to collect the world’s flora.
Notes
1 On the first voyage see Banks, Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766 (hereafter Banks, Newfoundland, when quoting directly from Banks, otherwise Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], when drawing from the editor‘s text). Lysaght published all the known material relating to Banks’s collections from Newfoundland and Labrador, see ibid., 40.
2 Wulf, Chasing Venus, title of chapter 10.
3 Banks, The Endeavour journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 (hereafter Banks, Endeavour journal, if quoting directly from Banks, otherwise Banks, Endeavour journal [Beaglehole], when drawing from the editor’s text). See also Cook, Endeavour, vol. I.
4 Banks, Sir Joseph Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic (hereafter Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, when quoting directly from Banks, otherwise Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Roberts], when quoting from the journal of James Robert, and Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Agnarsdóttir], when drawing from the editor’s text).
5 On the Russians in Siberia, see Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders, 266–75, quotation at 271.
6 ‘Additional Instructions', the Commissioners to the Admiralty to James Cook, marked ‘Secret’, 30 Jul. 1768, Cook, Endeavour, vol. 1, cclxxxii–cclxxxiv.
7 Braudel, Perspective of the world, 375.
8 Today this would be about £800,000. On Banks’s wealth, see Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 8. By 1807, his annual income was up to £14,000 (through inheritance and an advantageous marriage) and by the time of his death it stood at £30,000.
9 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 32. For an illustration of Banks’s certificate of election to the Royal Society, see ibid., 31.
10 Constantine John Phipps (1744–92), later the second Baron Mulgrave.
11 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 33.
12 Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 45–6.
13 Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, 36 (within a section on ‘The Sandwich connection’, 34–43).
14 Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 37, 64.
15 Carter, ‘Introduction’, xiii.
16 Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 37.
17 Ibid., 46.
18 On Daniel Solander (1733–82), see Duyker’s excellent biography, Nature’s Argonaut.
19 Linneaus’s apostles were his students, who were quite consciously sent out to spread the Linnean system. On Solander, see the interesting letter Banks to Alströmer, 16 Nov. 1784, Banks, Letters … a selection, 77–81.
20 Ibid., 78; Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 33; Duyker, Nature’s Argonaut, 20–3.
21 On Briscoe, see Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 593.
22 The European, or northern, water vole: mus terrestris; Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 125, 163, n. 78, 394–5.
23 Ibid., 133
24 Ibid., 133–7, 145–6.
25 Kalm travelled to Montreal and Quebec publishing, in the 1750s, En Resa til Norra America. An English version was translated by Johann Reinhold Forster, who took over Banks’s role as the naturalist in the Resolution. See Kalm, Travels into North America. Banks probably owned the Swedish version, see Duyker, Nature’s Argonaut, 95. Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 36–7.
26 Ibid., 37.
27 See Lysaght’s chapter ‘The natural history paintings and painters’, ibid., 101–7.
28 Ibid., 37–9.
29 See Lysaght’s chapter ‘The fate of Banks’s specimens’, ibid., 291–2.
30 Gascoigne, ‘Banks, Sir Joseph’, 691.
31 Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 10.
32 Carter, ‘Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society’, 3.
33 Banks to Pennant, late Jun. 1767, in Banks, Scientific correspondence, vol. 1, 17–18. The great botanist died in 1778.
34 Smith, Life of Sir Joseph Banks, 15–16.
35 Beaglehole, ‘Introduction’, cxxxv.
36 John Ellis to Linnaeus, 19 Aug. 1768, quoted in Duyker, Nature’s Argonaut, 94. There is no extant list of the volumes mentioned (unlike the Iceland voyage). There are estimated to have been between 50 and 65 titles, mostly the classics dealing with Asia and the Pacific. See ibid.
37 Wulf, Chasing Venus, 128.
38 Cook, Endeavour journal, vol. I, 387–8.
39 Ellis to Linnaeus, quoted Duyker, Nature’s Argonaut, 94.
40 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 176.
41 It is interesting to compare with Bougainville’s, Pacific journal.
42 ‘Secret instructions’, the Commissioners of the Admiralty to James Cook, 30 Jul. 1768, in Cook, Endeavour Journal, vol. 1, cclxxxiii.
43 An exhibition – ‘Endeavouring Banks’ – was held at The Collection, Lincoln in 2014. For the catalogue, see Chambers, ed., Endeavouring Banks.
44 Gascoigne, ‘Banks, Sir Joseph’, 96–7.
45 The West portrait is the frontispiece to Chambers, ed., Endeavouring Banks and the Reynolds is a frontispiece in Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic.
46 Linnaeus to Banks, 8 Aug. 1771, in Banks, Scientific correspondence, vol. 1, 42–3.
47 ‘Secret instructions’, Commissioners of the Admiralty to James Cook, 25 Jun. 1772, in Cook, Resolution journal, vol. 2, ‘Instructions’, clxvii.
48 This sum had to be handed over to the Forsters, after Banks had abandoned the Resolution.
49 For biographies of these men, see Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, appendix 1.
50 Bonehill, ‘New scenes’, 11–12.
51 Beaglehole, ‘Introduction’, xxx.
52 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 46
53 Ibid. [Roberts], 116.
54 For the latest see Bonehill, ‘New scenes’, 11–12; Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Agnarsdóttir], ‘Introduction’, 8–9.
55 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 47.
56 Ibid. [Roberts], 137.
57 Passport issued to Banks by Baron Diede, 2 Jul. 1772, in Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 155–8.
58 Claus Heide to Banks, 25 Jun. 1772, in ibid., 153–5.
59 Danish National Archives, Departmentet for de Udenlandske Anliggender (Foreign Office) 892, Count von der Osten to Baron de Diede, 11 Jul. 1772. By the time this letter would have reached London, Banks was on his way.
60 The Annual Register for the Year 1772, London, 1773, 116. London Chronicle (18–21 Jul. 1772) and other main London newspapers.
61 The London Magazine, 1772, 342.
62 The receipts date from late Jun./early Jul. Bonehill, ‘New scenes’, 10.
63 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, appendix 4, 602–3.
64 Short biographies of the Banks entourage are in Appendix 1.
65 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 47.
66 The London Magazine, November, 41, 1772, 342.
67 von Troil, Själfbiografi, 166–7, 209, 212, 215, 217, 224.
68 Now published for the first time in Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic.
69 Ibid. [Roberts], 128.
70 Perhaps they were mindful of the Turkish Raid of 1627 which had carried 400 Icelanders to a life of slavery in the Barbary, this was a collective memory.
71 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 80–2.
72 Banks to Thomas Falconer, 2 Apr. 1773, in ibid., no 12, 176.
73 For the Iceland expedition, see Agnarsdóttir, ‘Exploration of Iceland’; Agnarsdóttir, ‘This wonderful volcano of water’.
74 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 84.
75 Ibid. [Roberts], 135.
76 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 104–6. They all had a tendency to believe this, for example, Uno von Troil wrote in Letters on Iceland that they had ‘at last the pleasure of being the first who ever reached the summit of this celebrated volcano’ (5). See also ibid. [Roberts], 116. Of course nobody knows who was the first person to climb Hekla but historically the honour goes to Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson in 1750.
77 See Meynell and Pulvertaft, ‘Hekla lava myth’.
78 Plate 12 in Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic.
79 Bonehill, ‘New scenes’: 24.
80 The London Chronicle, 19 Nov. 1772; Bonehill, ‘New scenes’, 24
81 Banks sent his protégé William Jackson Hooker (later Director of Kew Gardens) to Iceland in 1809 to gather plants.
82 There is a project afoot at the University of Iceland to publish the scientific manuscripts, see Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Agnarsdóttir], 42–3.
83 Bonehill, ‘New scenes’, 10.
84 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Roberts], 137.
85 The first accounts of the Iceland expedition were actually published in the Uppsala newspapers in 1773 (footnote in von Troil, Letters on Iceland, 1) but this was the first edition. The copy of von Troil in the British Library is Banks’s own with a dedication from the author.
86 Kerguelen Trémarec, Relation d’un voyage; Pinkerton, General collection. The quotation is Pinkerton, vol. 1, 744.
87 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, appendix 4, 603.
88 Banks’s copy of the book is in the British Library. It is a very handsome volume ‘and illustrated with a New General Map of the Island’. Not until 1966 was an Icelandic translation published.
89 L’Encyclopédie, viii, p. 915.
90 Thoroddsen, Landfræðissaga Íslands, vol. 3, 18–46.
91 Anonymous, ‘Introduction’, in von Troil, Letters on Iceland, viii.
92 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 104.
93 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, appendix 5, 604–7.
94 Agnarsdóttir, ‘Exploration of Iceland’, 42–5; Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Agnarsdóttir], 29–34.
95 Gascoigne, Banks and the English Enlightenment, 9.
96 Beaglehole, ‘Introduction’, 93–4.
97 Banks, Newfoundland diary, 133, 136–7.
98 Ibid. [Lysaght], 146–7; Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic, 82; Banks, Endeavor journal, vol. 1, 337.
99 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 2, 325; Banks to Lauraguais, 6 Dec. 1771, in Banks, Letters … a selection, 18.
100 12 Jul. 1769, Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 312–3.
101 SOAS, MS 12023, Solander, ‘Vocabulary of the language of Taheite’. See also Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 370–3; see, for example, Duyker, Nature’s Argonaut, 141–2.
102 Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 54.
103 Banks, Newfoundland, 137–40.
104 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 222, 233, 292–3; vol. 2, 93–4. 100.
105 Collingridge, Captain Cook, 200.
106 Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 141.
107 Banks, Iceland and the North Atlantic [Roberts], Iceland journal, Banks Documents, 132–3, 136.
108 von Troil, Letters on Iceland, 112.
109 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 168.
110 Banks, ‘Tour in Holland’.
111 Banks to Edward Hasted, Feb. 1782, in Banks, Indian and Pacific correspondence, vol. 1, letter 237.
112 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, p. 25.
113 Banks to Edward Hasted, Nov. 1782, in Banks, Indian and Pacific correspondence, vol. 1, letter 237.
114 Dr William Watson to Dr Richard Pulteney, 16 May 1767, quoted by Carter, ‘Royal Society’, 247.
115 Banks, Endeavour journal [Beaglehole], vol. 1, 123.
116 Banks to Alströmer, 16 Nov. 1784, in Banks, Letters … a selection, 78.
117 See the library catalogue, Dryander, Catalogus bibliothecæ.
118 His letters are being published by the Banks Archive Project by Dr Neil Chambers, the Executive Director. The African correspondence is currently in the process of publication as are Banks’s England journals. On his return from Newfoundland during 1767–8 he travelled, recording his observations on two trips, one to Bristol and Wells in the south-west and the second to South Wales and the West Midlands. They will also be published in 2020, on the bicentenary of Banks’s death by Neil Chambers.
119 https://web.archive.org/web/20110513033923/http://www.linnaeus.uu.se/online/life/8_3.html. Accessed 1 March 2020.
120 Linnaeus to Banks, 8 Aug. 1771, in Banks, Scientific correspondence, vol. 1, 42–3.
121 Gascoigne, ‘Scientist as patron’, 243.
122 Banks to Hasted, 1782, quoted by Beaglehole, ‘Introduction’, 120.
123 Carter, Banks, the sources, 153–219.
124 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Banks. Retrieved 3 Mar. 2020.
125 https://naturalhistorymuseum.blog/2018/02/23/bringing-joseph-banks-into-the-21st-century-digital-collection-programme/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2020.
126 See, for example, Banks, Newfoundland [Lysaght], 39–40; and Hooker, Tour in Iceland, vol. 2, appendix C on volcanoes.
127 Gascoigne, Banks and the English Enlightenment, 2.
128 Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, appendix 27, 585–7.
129 Anon., ‘Memoir’.
130 Banks to William Jackson Hooker, 19 Jun. 1813, in Banks, Scientific correspondence, vol. 4, letter 1985, 102.