This talk focuses on two towering figures in Dutch colonial natural history: Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakesteyn, author of the Hortus malabaricus, the first comprehensive encyclopedia of South Asian colonial botany, and Georg Eberhard Rumphius, whose multiple works provided detailed accounts of the geography, history, and biodiversity of Maluku and the Indonesian archipelago. In both cases, however, the authorship of these works requires careful scrutiny. In the case of the Hortus malabaricus, the Italian discalced carmelite priest Matthew of Saint Joseph repeatedly made the explicit claim that he was the true author, corroborated by evidence from both fellow Discalced Carmelite scholars and Dutch colonial officials. In the case of Rumphius, it has been argued that his earliest writings were heavily influenced by the Hituese Imam Rijali's mid-seventeenth-century Hikayat Tanah Hitu. A comparative study of these cases reveals how texts, images and ideas were appropriated in the early modern colonial world, and it offers avenues to reflect on recent scholarly debates on the role of hybrid encounters and the contributions of indigenous communities to the development of Western science. 

Dániel Margócsy is Professor of History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Cambridge. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow and a former fellow of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the NYPL, he is the author of Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, 2014), co-author of The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius (Brill, 2018) and, most recently, co-editor of Transportation Technologies and the Mobility of Knowledge (a special issue of History of Science 61/1, 2023). His current research focuses on maritime logistics, natural history, and environmental transformation in the early modern Dutch East India Company's colonial possessions in South and Southeast Asia. This academic year, he is on research leave on a Senior Research Fellowship from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.