帝国的知识生产:20世纪初全球檀香贸易与檀香植物属名之争

The Generation of Imperial Knowledge: The Global Sandalwood Trade and the Dispute over the Sandalwood Botanical Taxonomy in the Early 20^(th) Century

20世纪初全球檀香贸易格局变迁,中国檀香市场低迷,欧美檀香消费文化兴起。这导致当时全球两大檀香产地——印度迈索尔与西澳大利亚相继转向欧美市场。两地檀香业竞争因而渐趋激烈,就连檀香植物属名也成为双方商业论战的话语。檀香属名之争的焦点最初是迈索尔和西澳檀香品质孰优孰劣,后来转向西澳檀香究竟是否为檀香属植物。英帝国内部伦敦、迈索尔和西澳等地商界、政界乃至科学界相关群体先后卷入其中。该争论最后以一种前所未有的“折中方案”收场,将西澳檀香标注为“檀香桃属(类檀香属)”。此方案帮助西澳檀香获得欧美市场认可,但也加剧了印、澳檀香业竞争。这场论争是英帝国扩张、全球贸易竞争与现代科学传播的结果。它说明现代植物学知识生成于帝国殖民语境,也受帝国殖民地之间商贸竞争的影响。

At the beginning of the 20^(th) century,the Chinese sandalwood market declined while the European and American sandalwood markets rose,which led to the changes happening in the global sandalwood trade. Mysore of India and Western Australia,which were the two largest areas of international sandalwood production,successively turned to the European and American markets. Consequently,the competition between those two sandalwood industries became increasingly fierce. Even the dispute over the sandalwood botanical taxonomy recurred and became the discourse of the commercial debate between the two sides. The focus of the dispute was initially the different quality of sandalwood of Mysore and Western Australia and later converted to whether the Western Australian sandalwood belonged to the Santalum genus. Within the British Empire,the business,political,and scientific communities in London,Mysore,Western Australia and other places were successively involved in the debate. Such debate ended in an unprecedented‘compromised way’,which added the words of‘Eucarya(syn. Santalum)’to the Western Australian sandalwood. Although this helped the Western Australian sandalwood gain recognition in the European and American markets,it intensified the competition between the sandalwood industries in India and Australia. This dispute resulted from the colonial expansion of the British Empire,the global trade competition and the spread of modern science. It revealed that the knowledge of modern botany generated in the context of the imperial colonisation and was influenced by the trade competition between the imperial colonies as well.