**‘Buitenzorg, botanic garden, Sterculia with Pernod/buttress roots’. Stereograph taken by Carl Schröter, 1898.** ETH Library

Green gold from Dutch India

In the late 19th century, landlocked Switzerland was looking for ways to harness the immeasurable diversity of tropical botany. It found what it was looking for in Buitenzorg on the island of Java.

Gabriel Heim

Gabriel Heim is a book and film author and exhibition organiser. He is principally concerned with research into topics of modern and contemporary history and lives in Basel.

“Precisely because we don’t have any colonies and there is little prospect of our acquiring any, we need to be on the lookout in all regions of the world in order to safeguard our economic influence abroad,” urged the Geographic-Ethnographic Society of Zurich in its annual report of 1899/1900. Commercial enterprises were also concerned about the thriving overseas trade of European colonial powers, expressing their regret that “Switzerland was condemned to be left out of this major movement.” The botanists and pharmacists at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (which became ETH in 1911) tasked with amassing scientific collections had been worried for some time that, as a landlocked country, Switzerland would have only very limited access to tropical fruit, seeds and ‘drugs for medicinal purposes’. In addition, the laboratories of food manufacturers were pushing for ‘exotic’ natural products with which they could develop new technologies and products. “The focus of these requests was applied knowledge for industry,” wrote historian Andreas Zangger in his definitive work Koloniale Schweiz (‘Colonial Switzerland’). Unlike Britain with its Empire and the Netherlands with its Maritime Empire, which could procure raw materials and goods from their colonies at will, Switzerland was long reliant on the patriotic goodwill of its nationals overseas or on shady merchants to meet its requirements, while generally avoiding costs.

**The Federal Council wanted direct access to tropical fruits.** Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, volume 16 (1897)

In 1883, the Federal Council therefore turned to Swiss representations abroad, sending out letters of solicitation with wish lists enclosed. The response was underwhelming. “Even though the goodwill was still there, most people lacked understanding of this type of work,” as vice consul Otto Dürler wrote to the Federal Council from Batavia (now Jakarta) on 6 March 1884.

**Post from Batavia: the correspondence between the Federal Council and the Consulate is now held in the Federal Archives.** Swiss Federal Archives

One person did heed Switzerland’s call, however. Melchior Treub, the recently appointed director of the famous botanic garden in Buitenzorg (meaning ‘without a care’ in Dutch) agreed to send an extensive collection of plants and seeds to Switzerland. This was a good start, and further consignments were to follow. The botanic garden, located in what is now the Indonesian province of West Java, had been established in 1817 at the official residence of the Dutch governor. Over the subsequent decades, it went on to become one of the world’s most influential and advanced centres of botanical research and teaching. At the heart of Buitenzorg’s success was applied botany, and it earned a reputation as a ‘central institute for botany’. Scientists from all over the world worked there in what were known as ‘visitors’ labs’, and international agronomy companies set up testing facilities for sugar, coffee, tobacco and rubber (US Rubber Plantations) on the site. Genevan botanist Bénédict Hochreutiner reported in the Journal de Genève in 1904: “It is not a garden, a study facility or an institute; it is a faculty of science geared towards botany.” The Dutchman Treub, whose mother was Swiss, immediately understood what the request for assistance from the Federal Council was all about. With his cleverly-chosen selection, he paved the way for the Swiss science community to access the diversity and biodiversity of the tropical plant world, for which the Federal Council expressed its “great appreciation and warmest thanks” in November 1884.

**Portrait of Melchior Treub, director of the botanic garden in Buitenzorg.** Wereldmuseum Rotterdam

In his thirty years as director (1880 to 1910), Melchior Treub intensified Buitenzorg’s ties to Switzerland. Starting in 1902, the Swiss federal government funded a ‘Buitenzorg scholarship’ initiated by Treub, which allowed Swiss botanists to spend a year conducting research on the island of Java. As Andreas Zangger notes, scientists from Switzerland subsequently stood good chances of finding employment in agricultural services in Dutch India. A total of 22 botanists took part in the scheme, and were employed in government testing stations or one of the privately-run laboratories of applied botany in the period between 1900 and 1930. Many later took up professorships at Swiss universities, while others dedicated themselves to ethnology, or were seconded by Switzerland to international organisations.

**‘Canarium Avenue’ in the botanic garden in Buitenzorg. Photographed by Carl Schröter, 1898.** ETH Library

What started with a Federal Council circular in 1883 translated into long-term gains in knowledge and insight for Switzerland in the subsequent decades. It is difficult to measure the fruitful, but little explored, legacy of the early botanical consignments sent from the tropics to the collections of ETH and other universities and to thrive in Switzerland’s botanic gardens, where giant trees that are over 100-years-old with ‘exotic’ origins can still be admired to this day.

**Bill of lading for plants, fruits and dried botanicals from Japan, 1901.** Swiss Federal Archives

The many and varied glass-plate negatives and photographic documents from Buitenzorg in the ETH Image Archive are testament to the close ties and an impressive reminder of this episode in Switzerland’s colonial history. With its 15,000 tree and plant species, the 80-hectare botanic garden in Bogor (Kebun Raya Bogor) is still an important centre of botanical research.

**‘Buitenzorg, botanic garden, Ficus Elastica with "Jongens" Ngut 1898’. Photographed by Carl Schröter and Maurice Pernod.** ETH Library

colonial — Switzerland’s Global Entanglements

13.09.2024 19.01.2025 / National Museum Zurich

Swiss citizens and companies were heavily involved in the colonial system from the 16th century onwards. Some Swiss companies and private individuals took part in the transatlantic slave trade and earned a fortune from the trade in colonial goods and exploitation of slave labour. Swiss men and women travelled the globe as missionaries. Other Swiss, driven by poverty or a thirst for adventure, served as mercenaries in European armies sent to conquer colonial territory or crush uprisings by the indigenous population. Swiss experts also placed their knowledge at the disposal of the colonial powers. And the racial theories prevalent at the time, which were used to justify the colonial system, formed part of the curriculum at the universities of Zurich and Geneva. The exhibition at the National Museum Zurich draws on the latest research findings and uses concrete examples, illustrated with objects, works of art, photographs and documents, to present the first-ever comprehensive overview of Switzerland's history of colonial entanglement. And by drawing parallels to contemporary issues, it also explores the question of what this colonial heritage means for present-day Switzerland.

More of: 20th / 21st century Research Colonialism