ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the path(s) leading to this mercantilist policy of cultivating consumer plants in a world-wide context, but its sweep is much broader, covering not only economic but also cultural and social issues in the same period. It discusses relationship between botany and commerce in the context of an expanding Europe in the long eighteenth century. Hans Sloane became influential when President of the Royal Society. Carl Linnaeus paid a complimentary visit to him when he was in England in hope of being recommended to a Fellowship of the Royal Society. The chapter also discusses the changing attitudes of man with the natural world, as described by historians such as Sir Keith Thomas. John Locke contrasted the "civil and rational" inhabitants of cities with the "irrational, untaught" denizens of "woods and forests". Linnaeus's projects included the cultivation of rice, coffee, sugar cane, ginger and olive trees, which were not available in Sweden.
