de Candolle, geography, and domestication
De Candolle first refused to treat crop variation as a model of wild speciation, then in 1883 adopted Darwin and mapped domestication in space.
Source
The Study of Geographical Distribution in the Analysis of Domestication as an Evolutionary Process: Tensions in Alphonse de Candolle's Approach
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Comparison of de Candolle’s 1835/1855/1883 books and Darwin correspondence on cultivated plants
- N
- Intellectual history; later treated 157 cultivated species — not a sample N
- Population
- Alphonse de Candolle’s botanical writings on domestication and geographical distribution
- Outcome
- Shift from refusing cultivated variation as speciation model to Darwinian spatial mapping
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
The authors compare his 1835, 1855, and 1883 books and his Darwin correspondence on cultivated plants.
What they found
Before Variation, domestication looked like resource management, not evolution. De Candolle denied that cultivated variation explained new species, then integrated spatial distribution. He named three agricultural hearths: China, southwest Asia/Egypt, and intertropical America.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is an intellectual history of one botanist’s trajectory, not a modern archaeobotany of crop origins.
Key terms
- Domestication as evolution
- Darwin’s claim that artificial selection models wild modification and speciation.
- Alphonse de Candolle
- Botanist whose plant-domestication books shifted after correspondence with Darwin.
- Geographical distribution
- Spatial evidence de Candolle finally folded into an evolutionary reading of crops.
- Agricultural hearths
- China, southwest Asia (with Egypt), and intertropical America as independent origins of agriculture.
Flashcards
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
De Candolle first treated Darwin by?
Common questions
First objection?
Cultivated variation could not be extrapolated to wild plants and new species.
What changed by 1883?
He adopted Darwinian theory and added spatial distribution.
Three regions?
China, southwest Asia/Egypt, and intertropical America.
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