HOME
*



picture info

Flora Japonica (1784 Book)
Carl Peter Thunberg, also known as Karl Peter von Thunberg, Carl Pehr Thunberg, or Carl Per Thunberg (11 November 1743 – 8 August 1828), was a Swedish naturalist and an "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus. After studying under Linnaeus at Uppsala University, he spent seven years travelling in southern Africa and Asia, collecting and describing many plants and animals new to European science, and observing local cultures. He has been called "the father of South African botany", "pioneer of Occidental Medicine in Japan", and the "Japanese Linnaeus". Early life Thunberg was born and grew up in Jönköping, Sweden. At the age of 18, he entered Uppsala University where he was taught by Carl Linnaeus, regarded as the "father of modern taxonomy". Thunberg graduated in 1767 after 6 years of studying. To deepen his knowledge in botany, medicine and natural history, he was encouraged by Linnaeus in 1770 to travel to Paris and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam and Leiden Thunberg met the Dutch botanist ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Jönköping
Jönköping (, ) is a city in southern Sweden with 112,766 inhabitants (2022). Jönköping is situated on the southern shore of Sweden's second largest lake, Vättern, in the province of Småland. The city is the seat of Jönköping Municipality, which has a population of 144,699 (2022) and is Småland's most populous municipality. Jönköping is also the seat of Jönköping County which has a population of 367,064 (2022). Jönköping is the seat of a district court and a court of appeal as well as the Swedish National Courts Administration. It is the seat of the Swedish Board of Agriculture. County government The Jönköping municipality has its headquarters in a place called "rådhuset". Rådhuset is an important component of the function of the municipality as it works as a state office for different departments of and in jönköping. Rådhuset is dependent on the municipality but is its own entity, the head of the rådhuset has political power but is not the head of the jö ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock company in the world, granting it a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be bought by any resident of the United Provinces and then subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets (one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange). It is sometimes considered to have been the first multinational corporation. It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. They are also known for their international slave trade. Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Factory (trading Post)
Factory was the common name during the medieval and early modern eras for an entrepôt – which was essentially an early form of free-trade zone or transshipment point. At a factory, local inhabitants could interact with foreign merchants, often known as factors. First established in Europe, factories eventually spread to many other parts of the world. The origin of the word ''factory'' is ( pt, feitoria; nl, factorij; french: factorerie, ). The factories established by European states in Africa, Asia and the Americas from the 15th century onward also tended to be official political dependencies of those states. These have been seen, in retrospect, as the precursors of colonial expansion. A factory could serve simultaneously as market, warehouse, customs, defense and support to navigation exploration, headquarters or ''de facto'' government of local communities. In North America, Europeans began to trade with the natives during the 16th century. Colonists created fact ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Batavia, Dutch East Indies
Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much-larger area of the Residency of Batavia in the present-day Indonesian provinces of Jakarta, Banten and West Java. The founding of Batavia by the Dutch in 1619, on the site of the ruins of Jayakarta, led to the establishment of a Dutch colony; Batavia became the center of the Dutch East India Company's trading network in Asia. Monopolies on local produce were augmented by non-indigenous cash crops. To safeguard their commercial interests, the company and the colonial administration absorbed surrounding territory. Batavia is on the north coast of Java, in a sheltered bay, on a land of marshland and hills crisscrossed with canals. The city had two centers: Oud Batavia (the oldest part of the city) and the relatively-newer city, on higher ground to the south. It was ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Robert Jacob Gordon
Robert Jacob Gordon (29 September 1743, in Doesburg, Gelderland – 25 October 1795, in Cape Town) was a Dutch explorer, soldier, artist, naturalist and linguist of Scottish descent. Life Robert Jacob Gordon was the son of Maj. General Jacob Gordon of the Scots Brigade (1572–1782) in the service of the Netherlands. Although of Scottish descent, Robert Gordon's allegiance and service lay with the Netherlands. He joined the Dutch Light Dragoons as a cadet in 1753 and enrolled at the University of Harderwijk in 1759. Here he studied in the humanities and soon proved to be of exceptional intelligence with diverse interests. He served at first with the Scots Brigade and later joined the Dutch East India Company, rising to the rank of colonel and commanding the Cape garrison between 1780 and 1795 and lived in the manor house known as Schoonder Sight. He went on more expeditions than any other 18th-century explorer of southern Africa. Of the six journeys he undertook, only four betw ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett. The organisation manages botanic gardens at Kew in Richmond upon Thames in south-west London, and at Wakehurst, a National Trust property in Sussex which is home to the internationally important Millennium Seed Bank, whose scientists work with partner organisations in more than 95 countries. Kew, jointly with the Forestry Commission, founded Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent in 1923, specialising in growing conifers. In 1994, the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust, which runs the Yorkshire Arboretum, was formed as a partnership between Kew and the Castle Howard Estate. In 2019, the organisation had 2,316,699 public visitors at Kew, and 312,813 at Wakehurst. Its site at Kew ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Francis Masson
Francis Masson (August 1741 – 23 December 1805) was a Scotland, Scottish botanist and gardener, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kew Gardens’ first Botanical expedition, plant hunter. Life Masson was born in Aberdeen. In the 1760s, he went to work at Kew Gardens as an under-gardener. Masson was the first plant collector to be sent abroad by the newly appointed director Sir Joseph Banks; he sailed with James Cook on HMS Resolution (1771), HMS ''Resolution'' to South Africa, landing in October 1772. Masson stayed until 1775, during which time he sent back to England over 500 species of plant. In 1776, Banks sent Masson abroad again, this time to Madeira, Canary Islands, the Azores and the Antilles. Whilst in Grenada, Masson was captured and imprisoned by the French, a traumatic experience which haunted him for the rest of his life. Although he was eventually released, his collections deteriorated during the delay in securing a passage home, and a hurricane in St. Lucia ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Little Karoo
The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe !Orakobab or Khoemana word ''ǃ’Aukarob'' "Hardveld") is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its extent is also not precisely defined. The Karoo is partly defined by its topography, geology and climate, and above all, its low rainfall, arid air, cloudless skies, and extremes of heat and cold.Potgieter, D.J. & du Plessis, T.C. (1972) ''Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa''. Vol. 6. pp. 306–307. Nasou, Cape Town.''Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Southern Africa''. (5th Ed. 1993). pp. 78–89. Reader’s Digest Association of South Africa Pty. Ltd., Cape Town. The Karoo also hosted a well-preserved ecosystem hundreds of million years ago which is now represented by many fossils. The ǃ’Aukarob formed an almost impenetrable barrier to the interior from Cape Town, and the early adventurers, explorers, hunters, and travelers o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Gamtoos River
Gamtoos River or Gamptoos River is a river in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It is formed by the confluence of the Kouga River and the Groot River (Eastern Cape), Groot River and is approximately long with a catchment area of . Course The Gamtoos river system is formed by the Groot, the Kouga and the Baviaanskloof River, Baviaanskloof rivers. The latter is a tributary of the Kouga. Although the rainfall in the catchment area is low, it supports a commercial irrigated agriculture in the lower catchment in which orange (fruit), oranges, tobacco, citrus fruit and vegetables are grown. There is an estuary where the Gamtoos river enters the Indian Ocean. It is located between Jeffreys Bay and Port Elizabeth and the Gamtoos River Mouth Nature Reserve is in the area. The towns of Hankey, the oldest town situated in the Gamtoos river valley, and Patensie are situated in the lower catchment. Further inland are the towns of Steytlerville, Joubertina, Uniondale, South Africa, Un ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Langkloof
The Langkloof is a 160 km long valley in South Africa, lying between Herold, a small village northeast of George, and The Heights - just beyond Twee Riviere. History The kloof was given its name by Isaq Schrijver in 1689, and more thoroughly explored by a later expedition under ensign August Frederik Beutler August Frederik Beutler (c. 1728 in Dinkelsbühl – ? in Cape Town) was an ensign ( sergeant 1747–49, ensign 1749–54) in the employ of the Dutch East India Company who headed an epic 1752 reconnaissance expedition lasting 8 months ... in 1752. The valley has been farmed since 1760 and developed into an important fruit-growing region during the 1900s, specifically prized for its apples and pears. Joubertina is the largest but also the youngest town in the Langkloof, and was founded in 1907 as a Dutch-Reformed community, named in honour of the Rev. W.A. Joubert of Uniondale. The reverend prohibited the sale of alcohol in the town, a ban which was never ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Breede Valley
Breede River Valley is a region of Western Cape Province, South Africa known for being the largest fruit and wine producing valley in the Western Cape, as well as South Africa's leading race-horse breeding area. It is part of the Boland bordering on becoming Little Karoo towards the east. Geography The Breede River Valley is relatively broad and flat for a Western Cape valley, averaging at a floor height of 80m-250m above sea-level. Western regions are mostly alluvial and flat, while eastern regions have more hills of the Bokkeveld Group with narrow alluvial deposits. The valley is framed by the high mountains of the Cape Fold Belt, with the Hex River Mountains and the Skurweberge to the northwest, the Langeberg Mountains (up to 2000m) to the north, the smaller Boland Mountains to the southwest, and the Riviersonderend Mountains to the south. It stretches from Tulbagh in the north to McGregor in the south and Rawsonville in the west to Ashton and Bonnievale in the east. It ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]