| Authorised form of name | Cunningham; James (c 1667 - 1709); naturalist |
| Dates | c 1667 - 1709 |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Place of birth | Scotland |
| Date of birth | c 1667 |
| Date of death | 1709 |
| Occupation | Surgeon |
| Research field | Botany |
| Activity | Education:
Leyden (admitted 1686)
Career:
Surgeon to the HEIC at Emoui, China (1698); went to Chusan (1700-1702); visited Ascension Island and Pulo Condore (1703), where he escaped a massacre; imprisoned in Cochin China (1705-1707); went to Batavia and then Banjar-Massin, from whence he was expelled and embarked for England, but appears to have died on the voyage home from Calcutta; he sent many plants to Sir Hans Sloane (FRS 1685), John Ray (FRS 1667) and James Petiver (FRS 1695)
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| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 20/12/1699 |
| Proposer | Sir Hans Sloane |
| OtherInfo | The first European to successfully return botanical collections from China. He sent many new plants, including tea specimens, to other botanists like Dubois, Plukenet, and Petiver, who acknowledged him in their works. Estimated to have collected about 600 different plant species in China, documenting them with descriptions, localities, uses, and local names. Plukenet published his findings, and Petiver described around 200 of Cuninghame's plants, which are now part of the Sloane herbarium held in the Natural History Museum and the collected drawings at the British Library. Cuninghame also sent the first published account of plants and shells from Ascension, and his observations on Chusan agriculture, including the cultivation of tea, were printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Robert Brown commemorated Cuninghame in the Latin name of the Chinese fir, Cunninghamia, now extended to the fossil plants Cunninghamites and Cunninghamiostrobos. |
| Source | Sources:
Bulloch's Roll; DNB; Hunter; Innes Smith
C E Jarvis and P H Oswald, 'The collecting activities of James Cuninghame FRS on the voyage of "Tuscan" to China (Amoy) between 1697 and 1699' in Notes adn Records vol 69, issue 2, 20 June 2015 |
| Code | NA6763 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EL/C2/35 | Letter, from James Cunningham to Hans Sloane, dated at the Cape of Good Hope | 6 April 1700 |
| RBO/8/61 | 'Some observations of the Mercurys Altitude with the changes of the weather at Emuy [Emoui] in China' by James Cunningham | 1699 |