Dietrich Brandis (1824–1907) – Botanist and Founder of the Science of Tropical Forestry

This is a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of the 2018 MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con entry “Diet­rich Bran­dis (1824 — 1907) – Botaniker und Begrün­der der tro­pis­chen Forstwissenschaften”. The text was trans­lat­ed by Rekha Rajan.

Table of Con­tents
Biop­graph­i­cal and Sci­en­tif­ic Back­ground   |   Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of Forests   | Forestry and For­est Enter­prise in British India  |   Archival Hold­ings   |  End­notes   |   Select­ed Bib­li­og­ra­phy for the life and works of Diet­rich Brandis

Diet­rich Bran­dis is known to many forestry sci­en­tists and some foresters as the founder of the sci­ence of trop­i­cal forestry. From 1856 till 1883 he was in British-India where he first stud­ied the teak forests in Bur­ma. From the time he became Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of Forests in British-India in 1865, until his retire­ment from civ­il ser­vice, he was instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing forestry in India.

How­ev­er, owing to his work with­in the frame­work of the British Empire, Bran­dis is also known in Cana­da and Aus­tralia. Besides this, he is also known in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, where his exper­tise and advice con­tributed deci­sive­ly to the devel­op­ment of forestry in the British Empire. Less well known is that Bran­dis was trained as a botanist and that he pur­sued his botan­i­cal inter­ests through­out his life. The Bran­dis herbar­i­um acquired by the Ham­burg Sen­ate in 1907 and inte­grat­ed into the Insti­tute for Plant Sci­ences and Micro­bi­ol­o­gy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ham­burg is an elo­quent tes­ti­mo­ny to this.

Biographical and scientific background

Diet­rich Bran­dis came from an aca­d­e­m­ic fam­i­ly which was embed­ded in a wide fam­i­ly and friends’ net­work of sci­en­tists, who lived and/or worked in Athens, Berlin, Kiel, Copen­hagen and Gӧt­tin­gen. Bran­dis, who as a young­ster and as a stu­dent had stayed in these places, gained a broad inter­est in botany here. How­ev­er, in the first half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry botany had not yet been estab­lished as a sep­a­rate dis­ci­pline but was com­bined with relat­ed sub­jects like geog­ra­phy, geol­o­gy and med­i­cine. In addi­tion, Bran­dis attend­ed lec­tures on clas­si­cal philol­o­gy, ancient phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, physics and Protes­tant the­ol­o­gy. In 1849, Bran­dis began work­ing as a botanist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn, where he was appoint­ed as a lec­tur­er for phy­to­chem­istry until 1855. How­ev­er, his lat­er career seems to have been blocked for unknown rea­sons. In 1855, he estab­lished con­tact with Major Gen­er­al Sir Hen­ry Have­lock through his wife Rachel, who was Havelock’s sis­ter. He request­ed Have­lock, who was serv­ing in the British-Indi­an army, to find him a posi­tion as a botanist in or near Calcutta.

With­in six months Bran­dis and his wife were in British India where Diet­rich Bran­dis took up his posi­tion as Super­in­ten­dent of Forests of the Province of Pegu (Low­er Bur­ma) in Jan­u­ary 1856. Two years lat­er, the provinces of Tenasser­im and Marta­ban on the west­ern edge of the Malay penin­su­la were added to the region under his con­trol. Here, in com­plete igno­rance of local for­est con­di­tions, Bran­dis devel­oped a sys­tem to record the tree-pop­u­la­tion, the so-called “lin­ear val­u­a­tion sur­veys” or “strip sur­veys” as well as the local­ly prac­ticed sys­tem of “girdling” (scratch­ing the bark around the trunk in order to inter­rupt the nutri­tion­al intake) on the basis of the age and the trunk cir­cum­fer­ence of a tree in order to then let it dry out on the trunk until it was ready for felling. Along with a clas­si­fi­ca­tion of for­est areas for future forestry use, Bran­dis worked out prin­ci­ples of sys­tem­at­ic for­est man­age­ment. These would be based on sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions and annu­al reports and be car­ried out by well-trained sci­en­tif­ic personnel.

Inspector General of Forests

Dur­ing the next quar­ter of the cen­tu­ry, Bran­dis would be engaged in the devel­op­ment of forestry in British India, the aim of which was to guar­an­tee the colo­nial state’s immense require­ment of wood for lay­ing rail­way lines in the sub­con­ti­nent and for the export of trop­i­cal wood, main­ly teak, deo­dar and sal. In 1865, the first For­est law was passed, after Bran­dis had gath­ered suf­fi­cient exper­tise in Bur­ma and had been appoint­ed as the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of Forests. The task now was to set up the office and a cor­re­spond­ing depart­ment (For­est Depart­ment) of the colo­nial admin­is­tra­tion and to cre­ate an appro­pri­ate legal basis for future action includ­ing for legal prob­lems that might arise. Leg­is­la­tion ini­tial­ly reg­u­lat­ed the pro­tec­tion of forests and their use, where­by exist­ing legal rela­tion­ships, includ­ing cus­tom­ary rights, were respected.

Colo­nial for­est law cul­mi­nat­ed in the For­est Act of 1878, the main fea­tures of which are valid even today. Leg­is­la­tion based on the then most pro­gres­sive Euro­pean for­est admin­is­tra­tions of the Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries and France divid­ed the forests of British India into three zones, name­ly pro­tect­ed, reserved and vil­lage forests, and reg­u­lat­ed access of the local pop­u­la­tion espe­cial­ly to the last one. With a sin­gle stroke of the pen it annulled all exist­ing legal rela­tion­ships, includ­ing cus­tom­ary rights, and declared the colo­nial state to be the sole own­er of all such des­ig­nat­ed for­est areas. The colo­nial admin­is­tra­tion had a vest­ed inter­est in secur­ing unhin­dered access to the nat­ur­al, and con­se­quent­ly, fis­cal resources in the future. Although the law did not dif­fer essen­tial­ly from exist­ing Euro­pean for­est laws, it was unique in its sever­i­ty. Besides this, the inher­ent flaw in this law was that it trans­plant­ed Euro­pean prin­ci­ples of for­est admin­is­tra­tion into a non-Euro­pean con­text with­out ade­quate­ly tak­ing local con­di­tions into account.

This was cer­tain­ly not Bran­dis’ inten­tion because the for­est and forestry leg­is­la­tion in cen­tral and west­ern Europe was by far not so rigid. More­over, in British India he was depen­dent on the coop­er­a­tion of the local pop­u­la­tion if the for­est admin­is­tra­tion was going to be prof­itable for sil­vi­cul­ture and rev­enue. At the very least Bran­dis was able to ensure a broad-based train­ing of the for­est per­son­nel in botany, geog­ra­phy, geol­o­gy, zool­o­gy and chem­istry. This indi­cates the holis­tic approach of the train­ing and points to the func­tion of the for­est admin­is­tra­tor as a gen­er­al­ist, an ide­al that would change after the turn of the cen­tu­ry in favour of the eco­nom­ic spe­cial­ist. After con­sult­ing the Indi­an min­istry and the colo­nial sec­re­tari­at in India, Bran­dis was able to recruit two for­est offi­cials from Hes­sen and Han­nover, Wil­helm Schlich and Bertold Ribben­trop, to help him in his man­i­fold and almost impos­si­ble tasks. They lat­er also suc­ceed­ed Bran­dis in the office of Inspec­tor General.

Forestry and Forest Enterprise in British India

In addi­tion to oth­er Ger­man forestry experts or botanists like Sulpiz Kurz from Augs­burg, a grow­ing num­ber of Eng­lish­men found employ­ment in the upper grades of the for­est ser­vices in British India, among them James Sykes Gam­ble and Dr. James L. Stew­ard, both of whom made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion in cat­a­logu­ing the syl­van botany of South Asia. In the same year in which the For­est Act was passed, Bran­dis estab­lished the Impe­r­i­al For­est School in Dehra Dun, which exists even today, for train­ing local per­son­nel. Already in 1875, under his lead­er­ship as Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of Forests, The Indi­an Forester, a jour­nal, or rather a mag­a­zine with sci­en­tif­ic essays direct­ed at a broad read­er­ship, was launched. Bran­dis him­self pub­lished reg­u­lar­ly in The Indi­an Forester, a total of 35 arti­cles, sev­er­al of which were on for­est admin­is­tra­tion, the train­ing of for­est per­son­nel as well as on teak and bam­boo. His arti­cle on mea­sur­ing the require­ment of rail­way sleep­ers for the rail­ways tracks in British India is well known. (The Indi­an Forester 4, 4 (1879), pp. 365–85).

Along with his exten­sive work as the high­est for­est admin­is­tra­tor and com­bined with his con­stant pub­li­ca­tions about the work being done, Bran­dis was hard­ly able to pur­sue his botan­i­cal inter­ests. Occa­sion­al­ly he com­plained to his col­leagues that he did not get around to col­lect­ing plants, let alone iden­ti­fy­ing them botan­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, his two big books on the flo­ra of British India bear wit­ness to his inti­mate knowl­edge of South Asian flo­ra and botany. One of these is the book begun by the afore­men­tioned Dr. Stew­ard on the For­est Flo­ra of North-West and Cen­tral India which was com­plet­ed by Bran­dis and final­ly pub­lished in 1874. Bran­dis com­plet­ed the book in the two years that he spent at home to cure his fail­ing health, and it was uni­ver­sal­ly praised for its thor­ough­ness with regards to flo­ra, fau­na, cli­mate and geog­ra­phy. Bran­dis had already gained a rep­u­ta­tion with his arti­cle “Rain­fall and For­est Trees in India”, pub­lished in 1871, in which he had empha­sized the con­nec­tion between the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of trees and the cli­mat­ic con­di­tions of a region and had illus­trat­ed this with a map that remained unsur­passed for a long time (Ocean High­ways 4 (1872), pp. 200–206. Reprint­ed in Trans­ac­tions of the Scot­tish Arbori­cul­tur­al Soci­ety 7 (1873), pp. 88–113 and The Indi­an Forester 9 (1883), pp. 173–83 and 221–33).

Bran­dis’ mag­num opus Indi­an Trees which was pub­lished one year before his death (1906), also remained unmatched. Bran­dis spent at least eight years struc­tur­ing and pro­cess­ing the mate­r­i­al col­lect­ed and pro­vid­ed. Indi­an Trees cov­ers more than 4,400 species of trees, bush­es, creep­ers, vines, bam­boos and palms of the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent includ­ing the Andaman and Nico­bar Islands, giv­ing them their cor­rect botan­i­cal names, syn­onyms, their col­lo­qui­al names, botan­i­cal descrip­tions as well as relat­ed flo­ra. Over­all, the book is a mon­u­ment of sci­en­tif­ic metic­u­lous­ness and of scrupu­lous botan­i­cal work, which estab­lish­es Diet­rich Bran­dis as an emi­nent botanist, even if this was not acknowl­edged dur­ing his life­time or even today. Fur­ther work on archival doc­u­ments as well as on Bran­dis’ own pub­li­ca­tions will con­tribute to a new under­stand­ing of the per­son and the botanist Brandis.

Archival Holdings

The annu­al report of the Ham­burg State Insti­tute of Botany for 1908 men­tioned under the rubric “pur­chas­es” that the Sen­ate of the State of Ham­burg had acquired Diet­rich Bran­dis’ exten­sive botan­i­cal col­lec­tion. How­ev­er, one does not know why par­tic­u­lar­ly the Ham­burg Sen­ate pur­chased Bran­dis’ herbar­i­um and why no oth­er high-rank­ing Euro­pean botan­i­cal insti­tute was inter­est­ed in it. Evi­dent­ly, dur­ing his life­time,  Bran­dis was famous only as a forestry sci­en­tist, which is why his exten­sive botan­i­cal activ­i­ties with their cor­re­spond­ing pub­li­ca­tions were soon for­got­ten.[1] The fact that Bran­dis was an excep­tion­al­ly gift­ed and keen botanist can be seen in the man­ner in which he mount­ed and sys­tem­atized 19,000 leaves in his herbar­i­um, which could there­fore be eas­i­ly inte­grat­ed into the herbar­i­um of the Ham­burg Botan­i­cal Insti­tute. This could also be a rea­son why the leaves are not list­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly. Already in 1911, the entire hold­ing was incor­po­rat­ed, sort­ed as it was into species.[2]

Lit­tle is known about the fur­ther fate of Bran­dis’ herbar­i­um. After the Insti­tute for Applied Botany was estab­lished in 1913, Bran­dis’ wood col­lec­tion was kept there. The Insti­tute of Gen­er­al Botany, estab­lished in the same year, took over not only the Botan­i­cal Gar­den but also the herbar­i­um of the Ham­burg Botan­i­cal Muse­um. Parts of the exten­sive and bulky wood col­lec­tions are in the Xylotheque of the Thü­nen Insti­tute. In 2012, the Insti­tute for Gen­er­al and Applied Botany was merged with the Bio­cen­ter Klein Flot­tbek. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Bran­dis herbar­i­um can be obtained from the present head cura­tor of the Herbar­i­um Ham­bur­gense, Dr. Matthias Schultz (matthias.schultz[at]uni-hamburg.de)

Endnotes

[1] Ham­bur­gis­che Botanis­che Staatsin­sti­tute. Jahres­berichte 1908. Aus dem Jahrbuch der Ham­bur­gis­chen Wis­senschaftlichen Anstal­ten 26 (1909), p. 10.

[2] Ham­bur­gis­che Botanis­che Staatsin­sti­tute. Jahres­berichte 1910. Aus dem Jahrbuch der Ham­bur­gis­chen Wis­senschaftlichen Anstal­ten 28 (1911), p. 8.

Selected Bibliography for the life and works of Dietrich Brandis

Guha, Ramachan­dra, “An Ear­ly Envi­ron­men­tal Debate: The Mak­ing of the 1878 For­est Act”. Indi­an Eco­nom­ic and Social His­to­ry Review 27, 1 (1990): pp. 65–84.

Höl­zl, Richard, “Der ‚deutsche Wald‘ als Pro­dukt eines transna­tionalen Wis­sentrans­fers? Forstre­form in Deutsch­land im 18. und 19. Jahrhun­dert”. dis­cus­sions 7 (2012), 29 pp. https‌://‌pr‌ae.‌pers‌p‌e‌ct‌iv‌ia.‌net‌/publikationen/discussions/7–2012/hoelzl_wald.  (Last accessed on: 03-09-2020).

Hes­mer, Her­bert, Leben und Werk von Diet­rich Bran­dis 1824–1907. Begrün­der der tro­pis­chen Forstwirtschaft, Begrün­der der forstlichen Entwick­lung in den USA, Botaniker und Ökologe. Abhand­lun­gen der Rheinisch-West­fälis­chen Akademie der Wis­senschaften: 58. Opladen: West­deutsch­er Ver­lag, 1975.

Negi, S.S., Sir Diet­rich Bran­dis: Father of Trop­i­cal Forestry. Dehra Dun: Bishen Sing Mahen­dra Pal Singh, 1991.

Prain, David, revised by Mahesh Ran­gara­jan, “Bran­dis, Sir Diet­rich (1824–1907)”. Oxford Nation­al Biog­ra­phy (1915, online edn 2004). Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32045

Rajan, Ravi, “Impe­r­i­al Envi­rontal­ism or Envi­ron­men­tal Impe­ri­al­ism? Euro­pean Forestry, Colo­nial Foresters and Agen­das of For­est Man­age­ment in British India, 1800–1900”. In: Richard H. Grove, Vini­ta Damodaran, Sat­pal Sang­wan (eds.) Nature and the Ori­ent. The Envi­ron­men­tal His­to­ry of South and South­east Asia. Del­hi: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1998, pp. 324–371.

Rawat, Ajay S., “Bran­dis: The Father of Orga­nized Forestry in India”. In: Ibid. (ed.) Indi­an Forestry: A Per­spec­tive. New Del­hi: Indus Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, 1993, pp. 85–101.

Sal­dan­ha, Indra Mun­shi, “Colo­nial­ism and Pro­fes­sion­al­ism: A Ger­man Forester in India”. Envi­ron­ment and His­to­ry 2, no. 2 (1996): pp. 195–219.

Bran­dis, D., For­est Flo­ra of North-West and Cen­tral India, A Hand­book of the Indige­nous Trees and Shrubs of those Coun­tries. Com­menced by the late J.L. Stew­ard, con­tin­ued and com­plet­ed by D. Bran­dis. Pre­pared at the Herbar­i­um of the Roy­al Gar­dens, Kew. Pub­lished under the Author­i­ty of the Sec­re­tary of State for India in Coun­cil. Lon­don: Wm H. Allen & Com­pa­ny, 1874.

——–, Indi­an Trees. An Account of Trees, Shrubs, Woody Climbers, Bam­boos and Palms Indige­nous or Com­mon­ly Cul­ti­vat­ed in the British Indi­an Empire. Lon­don: Archibald Con­sta­ble & Co. Ltd, 1906.

Archival Holdings

Herbar­i­um Ham­bur­gense, Insti­tute of Plant Sci­ence and Micro­bi­ol­o­gy, Uni­ver­sität Hamburg

Ger­man Let­ters 1858–1900, Archives, Roy­al Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, Kew

Journal

The Indi­an Forester 

Michael Mann, IAAW, Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin