Plants and Empire

Schiebinger’s archival sleuthing reveals a yawning hole in eighteenth-century science. She describes Europeans in the Caribbean behaving as knowledge pirates, stealing medicinal plants from indigenous communities as they laid the foundations for a modern drug industry.

However, one kind of knowledge didn’t travel: European physicians never mentioned the plants used by Caribbean women to manage their own fertility. Plants used by Native Americans and enslaved Africans as abortifacients and anti-fertility drugs arrived in Europe as simply pretty flowers.

Londa Schiebinger adopts a highly original premise in this book by casting a plant, the flos pavonis or “peacock flower,” as the central protagonist of the story she tells.

In this book, she presents in rich detail the story of how enslaved Africans and Indigenous women regularly and effectively used this plant to abort unwanted pregnancies. While the peacock flower itself was quickly transplanted into the Old World, knowledge of its abortifacient properties did not accompany its movement.