Bloß verpackt, verstaut, verschickt? Anlegestellen im Indo-Pazifik als sozio-kulturelle Räume angewandten Wissens im 18. Jahrhundert.

This paper argues for the significance of landing stages as socio-cultural sites of knowledge practice for the cross-oceanic transport of live plants. Focusing on the French attempts to collect nutmeg native to the Maluku Islands in the second half of the 18^th century, it explores the role of landing stages across the Malay Archipelago where the French collaborated with local populations and where plant material was being collected, packed, and shipped. By using a praxeological approach it explores landing stages through their interaction with socio-environmental factors that conditioned them as places of applied knowledge. Here, I insist on moving away from the Eurocentric concept of the harbour by introducing the more neutral term of,landing stages', which are determined by logics and logistics being adapted according to situational possibilities and limits of historical actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]