Adamboe 1678 - 1703

This botanical illustration, titled "Adamboe," was created by Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein in the 17th century. Born in the Netherlands, van Rheede tot Drakenstein was a colonial administrator for the Dutch East India Company, a company whose vast wealth was built on the exploitation of resources and people in Asia. This image is part of a larger project called the Hortus Malabaricus, a comprehensive study of the plants of the Malabar coast, now known as Kerala, India. While van Rheede tot Drakenstein is credited as the author, the knowledge and labor of numerous local scholars, artists, and healers were essential to its creation. The image invites us to consider the complex power dynamics inherent in colonial projects. While seemingly objective, botanical illustrations like this one were deeply entangled with European expansionism and the appropriation of indigenous knowledge. It exists as both an object of scientific study and a document that reflects the fraught relationship between colonizer and colonized.