Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture

Joseph Banks's name is attached to various plant species around the world; he was President of the Royal Society, a Privy Councillor and adviser to the English government on a range of scientific and imperial issues. He was a driving force in the establishment of a penal colony at Botany Bay. Yet there are few monuments to him, and while he has been the subject of a number of biographies, these have been focused on his personal career rather than his relations to some of the movements of th...