Botany and the Roots of the British Conquest of Sri Lanka

Sujit Sivasundaram, director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge, discusses the historic gardens that existed in Sri Lanka before the arrival of the British and the changes they faced during the colonial period. Under foreign rule, botanical gardens became an important tool of empire building as sites for introducing, propagating, and collecting plants. This program is presented in conjunction with the LACMA exhibition, "The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka."