ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Tupi Wine to Indian Ocean Spirits: Botanical Knowledge Across the Oceans

• In Event: Collection Stories and Indo-Pacific worlds 2

English Abstract

Plants tell their own stories. The movement of plants across early modern oceanic spaces reveals knowledge systems that transcend boundaries and challenge linear narratives of exchange. While Atlantic plant trajectories have received significant scholarly attention, Indian and Pacific Ocean circuits remain underexplored, despite their crucial role in reshaping global botanical knowledge. Through the case study of the cashew tree (Anacardium occidentale), the paper draws on fragmented collections of early modern century botanical texts in Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and German to show how botanical knowledge was produced, transformed, and circulated. Beginning with the Tupi peoples of tropical America, who cultivated cashews and fermented their fruit into spiritually and socially significant wine, it traces the plant’s journey through the Indian and Pacific Ocean worlds. It examines how cashew production and processing techniques evolved as the plant moved from the Malabar coast to the Philippine and Maluku archipelagos, revealing the diverse contributions of Indigenous cultivators, lower-class soldiers and sailors, and Christian missionaries to botanical knowledge production. By analyzing the transformation of cashew from Tupi ceremonial wine to distilled beverages called femi, this study illuminates how plants became vehicles for cultural exchange, technological innovation, and the creation of new knowledge that connected the Americas and maritime Southeast Asia. This trans-oceanic perspective reveals early modern botanical networks as sites of creative adaptation rather than simple transplantation, offering new insights into how global knowledge emerged through the intersection of human mobility and plant agency.

Author

• Kathleen Burke, University of Glasgow