Salons in the Queens House: The Seeds of Survival

This talk by Akosua Paries-Osei will focus on the botanical knowledge of enslaved women. Enslaved women were highly skilled botanists whose knowledge of anti-fertility botanicals was gained both in Africa and the New World. Their use of anti-fertility botanicals, such as the peacock flower or cotton seed, was empire-disrupting. 

Enslaved people transported African plants and botanicals to the New World. They also took the knowledge of those plants with them. They shared this knowledge with the local inhabitants and learned from their new environment. 

Throughout the entire period of Caribbean slavery, enslaved women’s botanical knowledge and reproductive resistance continued to destabilise the colonial empire. The knowledge of these women was highly sought after in both enslaved and white medical communities. 

Akosua Paries-Osei is a Technē-funded PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London. Akosua has concluded a Racial Justice placement at the Natural History Museum in Botany and the Sloane Herbarium. 

She conducts research into slavery and the history of science, with a specific focus on the botanical reproductive resistance of enslaved women from West Africa, and how their knowledge has been incorporated into modern medicine. 

Akosua’s research will be featured in a permanent exhibition in the central hall of the Natural History Museum, London.