
The Transactioneer
Hans Sloane and the Rise of Public Natural History in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Alice Marples(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Will be published approx. on 8. December 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-1-4214-5607-2 (ISBN)
Description
The history of how transactions built Britain's empire of public science.
Hans Sloane is often remembered as the founding collector of the British Museum. In The Transactioneer, Alice Marples offers a different portrait: not a heroic architect of Enlightenment progress, but a skilled manager of transactions-of specimens, correspondence, credit, and trust-whose practices helped redefine how natural knowledge was made public in eighteenth-century Britain.
The book examines how this knowledge was amassed and managed at the turn of the eighteenth century, tracing the daily labor of collecting, storing, cross-referencing, classifying, and circulating information through paper technologies and material exchange. Rather than treating Sloane as exceptional, Marples uses him as a lens through which to reconstruct a broader culture of knowledge-making that moved between private homes, coffeehouses, medical marketplaces, trading networks, and the Royal Society. Sloane's networks extended from Scottish cartographers and Irish landowners to Caribbean plantations and global trading circuits. These exchanges were embedded in systems of empire and slavery, whose violence and exclusions shaped both the materials collected and the authority claimed in their name. Satirized in 1700 as "The Transactioneer" for his reliance on correspondents and appetite for accumulation, Sloane nonetheless helped align natural history with commercial practice and a rhetoric of the "public good" that served to justify institutional power.
By reconstructing the material and moral economies that sustained early modern collecting, Marples reveals how trust, credit, and exchange underpinned the rise of public science-and how the management of knowledge became inseparable from the management of empire.
Hans Sloane is often remembered as the founding collector of the British Museum. In The Transactioneer, Alice Marples offers a different portrait: not a heroic architect of Enlightenment progress, but a skilled manager of transactions-of specimens, correspondence, credit, and trust-whose practices helped redefine how natural knowledge was made public in eighteenth-century Britain.
The book examines how this knowledge was amassed and managed at the turn of the eighteenth century, tracing the daily labor of collecting, storing, cross-referencing, classifying, and circulating information through paper technologies and material exchange. Rather than treating Sloane as exceptional, Marples uses him as a lens through which to reconstruct a broader culture of knowledge-making that moved between private homes, coffeehouses, medical marketplaces, trading networks, and the Royal Society. Sloane's networks extended from Scottish cartographers and Irish landowners to Caribbean plantations and global trading circuits. These exchanges were embedded in systems of empire and slavery, whose violence and exclusions shaped both the materials collected and the authority claimed in their name. Satirized in 1700 as "The Transactioneer" for his reliance on correspondents and appetite for accumulation, Sloane nonetheless helped align natural history with commercial practice and a rhetoric of the "public good" that served to justify institutional power.
By reconstructing the material and moral economies that sustained early modern collecting, Marples reveals how trust, credit, and exchange underpinned the rise of public science-and how the management of knowledge became inseparable from the management of empire.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
2 s/w Abbildungen
1 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4214-5607-2 (9781421456072)
DOI
10.56021/9781421456072
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Alice Marples is a historian of early modern science, collecting, and empire.
Content
Introduction
1. The Collective Creation of Early Modern Medical Knowledge
2. Joynt-Stocks: International Botanical Exchange
3. Reforming the Royal Society
4. All Parts of a Nation
5. Natural Knowledge and National Identity
6. Preservation for the Public Good: Creating an Audience for Natural History
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
1. The Collective Creation of Early Modern Medical Knowledge
2. Joynt-Stocks: International Botanical Exchange
3. Reforming the Royal Society
4. All Parts of a Nation
5. Natural Knowledge and National Identity
6. Preservation for the Public Good: Creating an Audience for Natural History
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index