ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the making of two treatises on natural history during the early modern period: the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae on Brazil and the Hortus Malabaricus on India. These were products of Dutch colonial engagements with Indigenous knowledge systems. The authors explore the various stages in the making of these two treatises, from information gathering to classification and the production of printed books that could be circulated globally. They follow the trajectory of information acquisition in situ from diverse sources employing numerous methods, its transfer to the Netherlands in various forms, and its transformation in printed matter – books – as part of the Dutch publication and book market in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. Indigenous participation and authorship attribution (or the lack thereof) in both treatises are examined along with the convergence of knowledge systems. Finally, they conclude that such products of Dutch colonial engagements in America and Asia are better understood not as single unique masterpieces, but rather as part and parcel of a distinct pattern of information gathering and publication, in an intercultural setting, which were intrinsically connected to the Dutch Republic's imperial and economic ambitions.
