Janet Starkey’s The Scottish Enlightenment Abroad constitutes a complete and documented effort to rediscover the Russell brothers and half-brothers of Braidshaw, Midlothian, and their lives and versatile activities abroad within the broader scenario of eighteenth-century natural history, medicine and commerce. This thoroughly researched and elegantly written book, richly complemented by forty-six illustrations and tables, is separated into six parts consisting of twelve main chapters – other than the Prelude, Epilogue, detailed Bibliography and three interesting appendixes. The main historiographical framework is elaborated in the Prelude, in which it is noted that the study, to some extent, draws inspiration from Maurits H. van den Boogert’s Aleppo Observed: Ottoman Syria through the Eyes of Two Scottish Doctors, Alexander and Patrick Russell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). But rather than being a mere add-on, Starkey’s book offers a very different perspective of the Scottish Enlightenment and the impact it had on the development of modern scientific culture, both in European centres and their peripheries. In doing so, this work principally falls in line with recent revisionist scholarship, which ‘effectively argued that the Enlightenment was not a philosophy or even a philosophical discourse but a cultural revolution’ (p. 12).
Opening with a discussion on various sites of knowledge and public discourses crucial for European cosmopolitans in order to live the Enlightenment, Chapter 1 presents a detailed outline of the socio-cultural and intellectual milieu of eighteenth-century Edinburgh wherein the Russells breathed and flourished. According to Starkey, it is important to consider the significance of the ‘Scottishness’ which essentially shaped the upbringing and medical training of two half-brothers, Alexander (1714–1768) and Patrick Russell (1726/7–1805), as well as their affluent social connections, ever-expanding professional networks and coveted careers abroad (pp. 19–20, 113–14). Having completed their medical studies, both Alexander and Patrick moved to Aleppo in North Syria and joined the English Levant Company’s factory as physicians, in 1740 and 1753 respectively. During their stay in Aleppo, a wealthy entrepôt and the third largest metropolis in the Ottoman Empire, they both assumed a dual character. As the assigned physicians to the factory, based in the Khān al-Jumruk at the heart of the souk in the Old City, they treated patients from all ranks and professions. Alongside, they took a keen interest in the history, commerce, medicine and natural history of the adjacent areas. While narrating the fascinating history of the English factory and the vibrant and colourful cosmopolis where it was situated, Chapter 2 provides some interesting observations of the Russells about the city, its architectures, thoroughfares, bazaars and numerous recreational and cultural complexes.
Alexander left Aleppo for London in 1754 and Patrick returned back to Edinburgh in 1772. Chapter 3 concentrates on the latter phases of their medical establishment in the somewhat ‘unfamiliar’ cosmopolitan society of London as well as their re-association with the family members and enlightened colleagues and close involvement with the scientific clubs and societies in the metropolises. In 1756, Alexander published his magnum opus, The Natural History of Aleppo, which provided him with huge recognition and fame for its scientific content and literary style. From the outset, this single volume mattered immensely to Enlightenment intellectuals, offered a first-hand and ‘useful’ information about the topography of Ottoman Syrian city of Aleppo, its inhabitants, everyday life and leisure activities, gardens and seasons, bazaars and suburbs, taxonomies of its flora and fauna, the Turkish harem, rituals and customs, local administration, pharmacology and medical treatment of various diseases. This splendid and expensive work (and its latter edition), which forms the central loci of Chapters 4–10 and 12 was widely consulted and repeatedly reviewed in the following years, translated into several European languages and extensively helped to shape Western perceptions of the Ottoman world. Although Alexander had a plan to improve and revise his work, he failed to find sufficient spare time for that (p. 80). Patrick, during his sojourn on the Coromandel coast of India as the naturalist to the English East India Company (1781–1789), worked considerably on this book (pp. 100–1) and eventually published a revised and expanded two-volume edition in 1794. These new volumes, though they confirmed the authority of the original, provided more detailed information on different ethnic and religious communities residing in Aleppo, women in households, epidemic diseases that severely affected the city and materia medica of Aleppines. It also added impressive lists of flora and fauna that came under Patrick’s direct observation. While in India, according to Chapter 11, Patrick also finished an estimable medical account, A Treatise of the Plague (p. 324), which was released to an adoring public in 1791. As the Company’s surgeon-naturalist, Patrick enthusiastically collected and studied Indian plants, fishes and deadly snakes, which had been explored very little to date. His pioneering pieces of research on the ichthyology (1803) and ophiology of India (1796–1809) were increasingly being recognised and acclaimed in worldwide scientific circles.
More or less, The Scottish Enlightenment Abroad is based on the same set of documents and touches upon the same issues that have previously been dealt with in Aleppo Observed, but Starkey’s book opens new lines of enquiry by means of the literary motif of ‘intertextuality’, that is, the ‘relation of co-presence of two or more texts’ (p. 5). This analytical tool is competently used with background archival research to demonstrate the intertextual relationships between Alexander’s locus classicus and Patrick’s edited volumes – an approach which deserves appreciation. Although Starkey’s book quite satisfactorily calls attention to a crucial period of history – the Age of Enlightenment – and the role played by lesser enlightened figures such as the Russells in developing the field of ‘Natural History’ and promoting the philosophy of ‘New Medicine’, it does not allow us to understand how Western science manoeuvred to master over the non-Western hemisphere by incorporating, learning from and violently displacing ‘Other’ knowledge systems. With the works of Mary Louise Pratt, Richard Grove, David Arnold, Deepak Kumar, Richard Drayton, Vinita Damodaran, Londa Schiebinger, Kapil Raj, Anna Winterbottom, Daniela Bleichmar and many others in hand, how could one consider the production of knowledge about the ‘man’ and ‘nature’ as innocent, disconnected with the operations of power?
