Clusius is a famous figure in the development of early natural history, and in this outstanding study Florike Egmond has now made it possible for any reader of English to appreciate him and the world of late sixteenth-century botany more than ever before. An earlier fundamental study, a two-volume biography by F.W.T. Hunger (1927–1942), based mainly on his correspondence in the collections of the universities of Leiden and Erlangen, has remained confined to readers of Dutch and Latin; in more recent years, several authors concerned with the history of natural history have had much to say about Clusius and his work, but mainly as grist for their argumentative mills. Yet with the shift in historiographical concerns of recent decades from biography and works to practice and networks, the extent of Clusius's remaining correspondence makes him an ideal subject for further investigations into the emergence of what was once commonly called the scientific revolution. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) therefore funded a ‘Clusius project’ at Leiden from 2005 to 2009, in which Egmond has played a key part; while other results are also being published, Egmond's monograph will undoubtedly be acknowledged as the starting point for any attempts to see the European botanical world through Clusius's life and work. It is erudite, elegant and clear.

Egmond is attentive to space as well as to time, organizing her study according to the regions with which Clusius was associated at different times in his life. She begins with the southern Low Countries of his youth, showing how widespread was the interest in gardens that gave pride of place to rare plants. As one of the chief entrepôts for the overseas spice market, Antwerp was critical in linking the region to the rest of the world, although the best evidence for a passion for the local cultivation of exotics comes not from male merchants but from noble women. The southern Low Countries had many links with Italy as well, which Egmond treats very well even though Clusius himself never travelled there. He did visit France more than once, and Egmond is very strong in giving an account of the botanical enterprises of various collectors and investigators in several places there in addition to the better-known Montpellier. While Clusius's residences in Spain and in Vienna were quite important to his later reputation, Egmond has decided (partly to leave room for a forthcoming PhD dissertation on the subject) to fold information about botany in these Habsburg regions into the other early chapters rather than develop them independently. Only near the end does Egmond discuss the northern Low Countries, where Clusius ended his life; this is appropriate not only for his biography but because she demonstrates that the Dutch were latecomers to the botanical movement. The shift of focus to Dutch ports also allows her to explore many of the connections across the North Sea, giving further emphasis to some of the interconnections of the period explored from the perspective of London by Deborah Harkness. Throughout, Egmond demonstrates an impressive command over her sources and a discriminating judgement in sorting through conflicting authorities without weighing down the reader with too much detail.

But as with any fine work of history, Egmond is not only careful and expansive in her descriptive account of Clusius and his world but argumentative as well. She emphasizes aristocratic honour, delight and gift-exchange far more than bourgeois medicine or commerce as the foundation for the explosion of interest in botany, while also making efforts to include as many kinds of figure as possible, going well beyond a story of the learned humanists who published books. She thinks that the most important distinction among the many botanical collectors was not whether a plant was native or exotic but whether or not it was rare, with the person associated with ‘first discovery’ earning kudos. Being aware of what was grown or depicted by others required the accumulation of information about nature. The ‘non-emblematic and non-metaphoric’ (p. 251) science of botany was therefore rooted in attentiveness to descriptive detail and in being able to compose accurate accounts of things not previously observed, rather than in any particular philosophical or theological programme. Moreover, in giving attention to the motivations expressed by Clusius and others, Egmond is attentive to their exchange of plants and other materials, but the travels and writings of the actors are to the forefront of her account. However, if her account is more about social relationships than about the network per se, she nevertheless argues that it was the network of plant lovers that gave rise to the science of botany rather than the other way around. While one might debate whether the ‘consumer revolution’ and other changes in the period contributed more to the developments she describes, even on her own evidence she is undoubtedly correct to ascribe the human motivations for the rise of the new science to the place and time rather than to any particular kind of scholarly debate. Whether the reader seeks reliable information or a well-informed point of view, then, The World of Carolus Clusius will not disappoint.