Unlikely Partners: Malay-Indonesian Medicine and European Plant Science

Abstract

The biological and strategic importance of the Malay-Indonesian region — synonymous with the biogeographical zones of Sunda and Wallacea — placed materia medica at the forefront of regional and international commerce in the pre-European era.1 It thus became the target of East India Company and imperial plant prospecting aimed at appropriating both the resources and the less tangible knowledge associated with them. I argue that, notwithstanding European political hegemony, indigenous materia medica remained autonomous and inaccessible except through avenues of social discourse and collaboration.