Nature and Scientific Knowledge in the Spanish Empire Introduction
2006; Routledge; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10609160600607416
ISSN1466-1802
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. There is a well-developed corpus of literature on the history of science in Ibero-America by Spanish and Latin American scholars. Some recent examples include Pimentel (1988, 2000); Lafuente and Sala Catalá (1992 Lafuente , Antonio , and José Sala Catalá , eds . 1992 . Ciencia colonial en América . Madrid : Alianza . [Google Scholar]) Lafuente, Elena, and Ortega (1993 Lafuente , Antonio , Alberto Elena , and Maria L. Ortega , eds . 1993 . Mundialización de la ciencia y cultura nacional . Madrid : Ediciones Doce Calles . [Google Scholar]); Sala Catalá (1994 Sala Catalá, José. 1994. Ciencia y técnica en la metropolización de América, Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles. [Google Scholar]); Díez Torre, Mallo, and Fernández (1995 Díez Torre, Alejandro R., Tomás, Mallo and Daniel Pacheco, Fernández. 1995. De la ciencia ilustrada a la ciencia romántica, Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles. [Google Scholar]); Trabulse (1994 Trabulse, Elías. 1994. Ciencia y tecnología en el Nuevo Mundo, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica. [Google Scholar], 1995 Trabulse, Elías. 1995. Arte y ciencia en la historia de México, Mexico City: Banamex. [Google Scholar]); and Saldaña (1996 Saldaña , Juan José , ed. 1996 . Historia social de las ciencias en América latina . Mexico City : Porrúa . [Google Scholar]). The anglophone literature is much less well developed. Studies on colonial Latin America include Cañizares-Esguerra (2001, 2003, 2005a, 2005b); Engstrand (1981 Engstrand, Iris. 1981. Spanish scientists in the New World: The eighteenth-century expeditions, Seattle: University of Washington Press. [Google Scholar]); Glick (1991 Glick, Thomas. 1991. Science and independence in Latin America (with special reference to New Granada). Hispanic American Historical Review, 71: 306–34. [Google Scholar]); McCook (2002); and Steele (1964 Steele, Arthur Robert. 1964. Flowers for the king: The expedition of Ruiz and Pavón and the flora of Peru, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]). For recent works on the development of cartography in early modern Spain see Padrón (2004 Padrón, Ricardo. 2004. The spacious word. Cartography, literature, and empire in early modern Spain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) and Sandman (2002 Sandman, Alison. 2002. “Sea charts, navigation, and territorial claims in sixteenth-century Spain”. In Merchants & marvels. Commerce, science, and art in early modern Europe, Edited by: Smith, Pamela H. and Findlen, Paula. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]); on indigenous cartography in colonial Mexico see Mundy (1996). 2. Caveat lector: in preparation for my commentary on the original papers presented at the panel on ‘Visualizing Colonial Nature,’ and for my revisions of this introduction (given that I am not an historian of science), I found the essays in the forum on colonial science in Isis (2005 Schiebinger, Londa. 2005. Forum introduction: The European colonial science complex. Isis, 96: 52–55. March[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), in Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, a special issue of Osiris (2000 Lafuente, Antonio. 2000. Enlightenment in an imperial context: Local science in the late eighteenth-century Hispanic world. Osiris, 15: 155–73. [Google Scholar]) and in vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Science, ‘Eighteenth-Century Science’ (2003 Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. 2003. “Spanish America. From baroque to modern colonial science”. In The Cambridge history of science. Vol. 4, Eighteenth-century science, Edited by: Porter, Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]) particularly useful in directing me to current trends and debates in the field. Also useful are Freedberg (2002); Jordanova (1999); and Stafford (1984). 3. As MacLeod argues: ‘It is in the process of multiple engagements—between Europeans at home and abroad, between Europeans and indigenous peoples, and between Western and non-Western science—that the processes of colonial science developed’ (2000 MacLeod, Roy. 2000. Introduction. Nature and empire: Science and the colonial enterprise. Osiris, 15: 1–13. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 6). 4. Even in recent first-rate works, however, such as the volume edited by Jardine, Secord, and Spary (1996 Jardine , Nicholas , J. A. Secord , and E. C. Spary , eds. 1996 . Cultures of natural history . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [Google Scholar]), Iberia and its empire are excluded from any substantive discussion, which contributes, however unintentionally, to their marginalization from mainstream discussions of the history of the biological sciences. A recent and welcome exception is the collection of essays edited by Schiebinger and Swan (2005 Schiebinger , Londa , and Claudia Swan , eds . 2005 . Colonial botany. Science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press . [Google Scholar]). Cañizares-Esguerra recently threw down the gauntlet to scholars in his review essay on Iberian science in the Renaissance. In his critique of a literature on the Scientific Revolution which has been ungenerous in its acknowledgement of Spain's and Portugal's contributions to the advancement of science and technology in the sixteenth century, he observes ‘how difficult it has become for Anglo-American scholarship to bring Iberia back into narratives on the origins of “modernity”’ (2004 Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. 2004. Iberian science in the Renaissance: Ignored how much longer?. Perspectives on Science, 12(1): 86–124. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 86). 5. See MacLeod's useful historiographical analysis of the shifting dialectic between the history of science and the history of colonialism (2000 MacLeod, Roy. 2000. Introduction. Nature and empire: Science and the colonial enterprise. Osiris, 15: 1–13. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 6. Botany and empire has become a sub-genre in itself, as exemplified by recent works such as those by Miller and Reill (1996 Miller , David Philip , and Peter Hanns Reill , eds . 1996 . Visions of empire. Voyages, botany, and representations of nature . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [Google Scholar]); Drayton (2000 Drayton, Richard. 2000. Nature's government: Science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement of the world”, New Haven: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]); Gascoigne (1998 Gascoigne, John. 1998. Science in the service of empire: Joseph Banks, the British state and the uses of science in the Age of Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]); Spary (2000 Spary, Emma C. 2000. Utopia's garden. French natural history from Old Regime to Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); and Schiebinger and Swan (2005 Schiebinger , Londa , and Claudia Swan , eds . 2005 . Colonial botany. Science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press . [Google Scholar]). 7. See Kagan's astute assessment of the ‘Decline of Spain,’ a related and lingering stereotype in historical scholarship (1996 Kagan, Richard L. 1996. Prescott's paradigm: American historical scholarship and the decline of Spain. American Historical Review, 101(2): 423–46. [Google Scholar]). 8. A ‘fresh look’ at knowledge making includes consideration of new individuals, ‘practitioners’ who in the early modern period occupied a ‘middle ground between university-trained scholars, immersed in texts, and workshop-trained artisans, immersed in a world of technique. … For many of these practitioners who saw natural knowledge as an arena in which they could gain new authority and legitimacy, and possibly wealth, their attention focused on medicine’ (Smith and Findlen 2002 Kaufmann, Thomas Dacosta. 2002. “Questions of representation”. In Merchants & marvels. Commerce, science, and art in early modern Europe, Edited by: Smith, Pamela H. and Findlen, Paula. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 16–17). Individuals such as Villasante suggest that ‘practitioners’ were not necessarily restricted to artisans. Another example of such a practitioner is Enrico Martínez, who in his search for status, authority and patronage began his career in seventeenth-century Mexico as a translator for the Inquisition, became a printer and cosmographer, and was finally appointed as the Maestro del Desagüe. For a perceptive discussion of how Martínez was able to ‘translate his knowledge of languages, science, and mathematics into social mobility,’ see Peterson's account (2003 Peterson , Heather . 2003 . Enrico Martínez: Ambition, authority, and astrology in seventeenth-century New Spain. Master's thesis , University of Texas at Austin . [Google Scholar]). For a brief discussion of the need for more research on gender and colonial science, see Schiebinger (2005 Lafuente, Antonio and Nuria, Valverde. 2005. “Linnaean botany and Spanish imperial biopolitics”. In Colonial botany. Science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world, Edited by: Schiebinger, Londa and Swan, Claudia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar], 55). 9. Spary makes an important cautionary argument that to ignore the problem of how scientific authority is achieved ‘undermines simplistic narratives of the relationship between botanical expertise, colonization, and empire’ (2005 Spary, Emma C. 2005. “Of nutmegs and botanists: The colonial cultivation of botanical identity”. In Colonial botany. Science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world, Edited by: Schiebinger, Londa and Swan, Claudia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar], 187). 10. It is worth noting that prior to Villasante's endeavors two physicians were appointed around 1512 by the royal protomedicato of Castile as royal medical officers, protomédicos, in Santo Domingo. In 1519, Charles V revoked the appointments not only because the protomedicato, and not the king, authorized them but also because the city council of Santo Domingo complained that if they exercised their regulatory powers against unlicensed practitioners ‘it would seriously disrupt the island’ (Tepaske 2000 Tepaske , John Jay . 2000 . Regulation of medical practitioners in the Age of Francisco Hernández . In Searching for the secrets of nature. The life and works of Dr. Francisco Hernández . Stanford : Stanford University Press . [Google Scholar], 56). 11. For a positive gloss on Spain's contributions see Fox (2003 Fox, Robert. 2003. “Science and government”. In The Cambridge history of science. Vol. 4, Eighteenth century science, Edited by: Porter, Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], 116–18) and Nieto-Galan's (1999 Nieto-Galán, Agustí. 1999. “Dyeing, calico printing, and technical exchanges in Spain: The Royal Manufactures and the Catalan textile industry, 1750–1820”. In Natural dyestuffs and industrial culture in Europe, 1750–1880, Edited by: Fox, Robert and Nieto-Galán, Agustí. Canton, MA: Science History Publications. [Google Scholar]) discussion of dyes and technical transfer in eighteenth-century Spain. 12. Mutis’ objective (admittedly, one of many), to produce a visual record of American flora in his lifetime, the Flora de Bogotá, was never achieved. The often prohibitive costs of engraving and publication of botanical illustrations was a problem faced by many botanists and scientists in Europe, not just those in Spain. Brian Ford notes that, for example, even Sir Joseph Banks’ project to publish a folio work of new plant species from Australasia, the Florilegium, in his lifetime, failed. It was finally published in 1990 (Ford 2003 Ford, Brian J. 2003. “Scientific illustration in the eighteenth century”. In The Cambridge history of science. Vol. 4, Eighteenth century science, Edited by: Porter, Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], 572). The results (if only partial) of some Spanish expeditions, however, did see the light of day and were published within several decades after the completion of the expeditions. One example is that of the Ruiz and Pavón expedition, from which resulted the Florae Peruvianae, et Chilensis Prodromus (1794), and vols. II (1799), III (1802), and IV (1804) of the Florae Peruviana et Chilensis sive Descriptiones et Icones Plantarum Peruvianarum et Chilensium. For a brief but useful account of botanical and scientific investigations and publications in Spain see López Piñero and Jerez Moliner (1999 López, Piñero, José, María and Felipe, Jerez Moliner. 1999. La imagen científica de la vida. La contribución valenciana a la ilustración médica y biológica (siglos XVI–XIX), Valencia: OPVI. [Google Scholar]). 13. For a useful discussion of the training of engravers and illuminators specializing in botanical illustration of the ‘Floras Americanas’ in Madrid see Rodríguez Nozal and González Bueno (1995 Rodríguez Nozal, Raúl and Antonio González, Bueno. 1995. “La formación de grabadores para las ‘Flores Americanas’: Un proyecto ilustrado”. In De la ciencia ilustrada a la ciencia romántica, Edited by: Diéz Torre, Alejandro R., Mallo, Tomás and Pacheco Fernández, Daniel. Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles. [Google Scholar]). 14. For the comparative case of botanical illustration in British India and the resistance to the universalizing demands of the conventions of eighteenth-century British botanical illustrations see Tobin's discussion of ‘resistance’ from native artists (1999 Tobin, Beth Fowkes. 1999. Picturing imperial power. Colonial subjects in eighteenth-century British painting, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]). 15. De Pedro (1988 de Pedro , Antonio E. 1988 . Imágenes de una expedición botánica . In La expedición botánica al Virreinato del Perú (1777–1788) . Madrid : Lunwerg Editores . [Google Scholar]) discusses how painters contributed to the development of iconographical forms of botanical illustration in other Spanish expeditions, despite botanists’ efforts to standardize and control illustrations. Painters who joined the Ruiz and Pavón expedition were supplied with copies of the Instruccion que deberan observar los Dibujantes que pasan al Perú de orden de S.M … (Archivo del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Expediciones, exp. 7) which, theoretically, they were required to follow. In addition to stipulating the style of illustration to be followed, such Instrucciones also laid out painters’ additional obligations, such as helping botanists collect plant specimens. 16. Mutis’ support for staffing scientific institutions with local candidates and scholars is illustrated by his lobbying for Jorge Tadeo Lozano (although this scholar trained in Madrid) to occupy a proposed new chair of chemistry instead of recruiting chemistry professors from Europe. See Glick (1991 Glick, Thomas. 1991. Science and independence in Latin America (with special reference to New Granada). Hispanic American Historical Review, 71: 306–34. [Google Scholar], 319). 17. Hipólito Ruiz also held somewhat jaundiced views of Spanish artists, especially their reluctance to help in the collection of specimens. His biases and frustration are evident in his protest that ‘The artists escaped this affliction [mal de mayco, a skin disease] … because they did not go out into the field as we did. They also did not share in the continual fatigue, falls, blows, heat, thirst, hunger, bad weather, and suffering that fell to the lot of the botanists because of the rough and rugged character of those tangled jungles’ (Ruiz 1998 Ruiz , Hipólito . 1998 . The journals of Hipólito Ruiz, Spanish botanist in Peru and Chile, 1777–1788 . [Relación del viaje hecho a los reynos del Perú y Chile]. Translated by Richard Evans Schultes and María José Nemry von Thenen de Jaramillo-Arango. Portland, OR : Timber Press . [Google Scholar], 272). During a trip into the jungle in 1785, the expedition's artists, according to Ruiz, decided quite independently to return to Huánuco, which Ruiz viewed as ‘desertion.’ Such encounters may explain why one of the qualities required in the selection of artists for scientific expeditions was that of docilidad. Of course, the physical risks for everyone involved in the expeditions were very real and mortalities were high. For example, one of the most prominent artists of the Ruiz and Pavón expedition, José Brunete, died in Pasco in 1787 (Ruiz 1998 Ruiz , Hipólito . 1998 . The journals of Hipólito Ruiz, Spanish botanist in Peru and Chile, 1777–1788 . [Relación del viaje hecho a los reynos del Perú y Chile]. Translated by Richard Evans Schultes and María José Nemry von Thenen de Jaramillo-Arango. Portland, OR : Timber Press . [Google Scholar], 297–99). See de Pedro's analysis of the recruitment and terms of work for expedition artists (1988 de Pedro , Antonio E. 1988 . Imágenes de una expedición botánica . In La expedición botánica al Virreinato del Perú (1777–1788) . Madrid : Lunwerg Editores . [Google Scholar]). 18. I am aware of only one other example of an artist from Mexico, Miguel Cabrera (1695–1768), defining himself in this way on his work. On a painting of San José, he signed himself ‘Michl. Cabrera americanus pinxiebat’ [author's emphasis] (Deans-Smith forthcoming). For Mutis’ pro-independence views see Glick (1991 Glick, Thomas. 1991. Science and independence in Latin America (with special reference to New Granada). Hispanic American Historical Review, 71: 306–34. [Google Scholar], 319–20). The chief painter of the Botanical Expedition, Salvador Rizo, joined Bolivar in Venezuela and was executed in 1816. For discussions of Creole patriotic science see Cañizares-Esguerra (1999 Cañizares-Esguerra , Jorge. 1999 . New world, new stars: Patriotic astrology and the invention of Indian and Creole bodies in colonial Spanish America, 1600–1650 . American Historical Review 104 (February) : 33 – 68 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2003 Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. 2003. “Spanish America. From baroque to modern colonial science”. In The Cambridge history of science. Vol. 4, Eighteenth-century science, Edited by: Porter, Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], 2005a, 2005b) and LaFuente and Valverde (2005 Lafuente, Antonio and Nuria, Valverde. 2005. “Linnaean botany and Spanish imperial biopolitics”. In Colonial botany. Science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world, Edited by: Schiebinger, Londa and Swan, Claudia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar]); for the relationship between science and independence in Latin America see Glick (1991 Glick, Thomas. 1991. Science and independence in Latin America (with special reference to New Granada). Hispanic American Historical Review, 71: 306–34. [Google Scholar]) and McFarlane (1993 McFarlane, Anthony. 1993. Colombia before independence: Economy, society, and politics under Bourbon rule, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 19. For a development of this issue see Cañizares-Esguerra (2005b). 20. For a discussion of criticisms of Mutis and ‘Mutisian science’ by Creole scientists such as Caldas see Lafuente (2000 Lafuente, Antonio. 2000. Enlightenment in an imperial context: Local science in the late eighteenth-century Hispanic world. Osiris, 15: 155–73. [Google Scholar], 166–71). 21. For a clear if obvious example of who was not profiting from the demand for quinine, see Hipólito Ruiz's candid analysis of the economics of quinine (based on the repartimiento system) in his Journals (1998 Ruiz , Hipólito . 1998 . The journals of Hipólito Ruiz, Spanish botanist in Peru and Chile, 1777–1788 . [Relación del viaje hecho a los reynos del Perú y Chile]. Translated by Richard Evans Schultes and María José Nemry von Thenen de Jaramillo-Arango. Portland, OR : Timber Press . [Google Scholar]). He notes that Indians in the villages of Acomayo and Panao, and especially those in Pillao, have harvested many thousands of bushels of quinine bark every year, yet they are penniless and practically always in debt for one or two hundred bushels. The intrinsic value of this amount of bark is much greater than the worth of the Indians’ huts, plantings, and cattle. This obvious truth will shock those who do not know that the buyers get back the money that Indians receive for the bark, usually in advance, by strange and not always honest methods … In 1784, the 55 Indians of Pillao harvested 25,000 pounds of quinine bark in only 8 days: were we to appraise the value of the buildings of the whole village, we would not find it equal to that of 2500 pounds of bark. Ruiz also laments the deforestation caused by demand for quinine (1998 Ruiz , Hipólito . 1998 . The journals of Hipólito Ruiz, Spanish botanist in Peru and Chile, 1777–1788 . [Relación del viaje hecho a los reynos del Perú y Chile]. Translated by Richard Evans Schultes and María José Nemry von Thenen de Jaramillo-Arango. Portland, OR : Timber Press . [Google Scholar], 306–7). 22. On perceptions of ‘isolation’ due to colonial conditions and its impact on scientific practice see Glick (1991 Glick, Thomas. 1991. Science and independence in Latin America (with special reference to New Granada). Hispanic American Historical Review, 71: 306–34. [Google Scholar], 314–18).
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