A Global History of Knowledge in the Early Modern World
Sources from 1500-1800
Philip Hahn (Anthology Editor) , Anne Mariss (Anthology Editor) , Laura Dierksmeier (Anthology Editor)
- Textbook
A Global History of Knowledge in the Early Modern World
Sources from 1500-1800
Philip Hahn (Anthology Editor) , Anne Mariss (Anthology Editor) , Laura Dierksmeier (Anthology Editor)
- Textbook
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Description
Offering a fresh, global approach to the history of knowledge, this book brings together a collection of annotated primary sources, many newly translated and rarely accessible, from across the Early Modern World. Covering the period from roughly 1500 to 1800, this multi-perspective volume reveals how ideas, practices, and beliefs travelled across vast distances-by ship, on foot, in letters, images, and objects-and how they were reshaped in the process.
Organised into three thematic sections, A Global History of Knowledge includes case studies ranging from missionary navigation in colonial Chile to portable sundials in European households, the transfer of Indigenous knowledge from Latin America to the European Republic of Letters, and the flow of Jesuit ideas between Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Each chapter centres on a compelling source-many never before available in English-that opens a window into how knowledge was created, shared, and transformed in a world marked by mobility, encounter, and exchange. This book invites readers to explore how knowledge moved, not just across continents, but between cultures, disciplines and worldviews, and why that movement still matters today.
Table of Contents
List of contributors
List of images
Approaching and Framing Global Histories of Knowledge: An Introduction, Anne Mariss, Laura Dierksmeier, Philip Hahn
Part I: Natural Knowledge in Transit: Objects, Bodies, and Belief
1. Timekeeping as Cosmological Knowledge: Portable Sundials in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Sky Michael Johnston
2. “A Land Hot and Wet:” Maria Sibylla Merian in Suriname (1699–1701), Richard Calis
3. Sleeping in a Net Between the Trees: Brazilian Hammocks at the Württemberg Court and their Transatlantic Knowledge Networks (c. 1600–1800), Ruth Egger
4. Jerusalem in a Box: Protestant Uses of Loca Sancta Relics and Empirical Devotion in Eighteenth-Century Halle (1758), Anne Mariss
5. When Indigenous Knowledge Challenged the Inquisition: A Priest's Defense of Medicinal Cannabis in Colonial Mexico (1772), Laura Dierksmeier
6. Sailing Directions, Literary Mysteries, and the Domestication of Newfoundland: A Maritime Commonplace Book of 1787, Lena Moser
Part II: Translating the World: Moving Ideas across Cultural and Language Barriers
7. Brothers in Arms? Translating Ethiopian Christianity in Reformation Germany and the Making of the Confessional Divide, Christina Brauner
8. Marcus zum Lamm's Image of “Constantinus Magnus” and Visual Multiplicities in Reformed Heidelberg, c. 1600, Frederick Crofts
9. Knowledge in Motion: The Formation of the Circular Mission of Chiloé in Chile (1609–1611), Carmen Channing
10. Gesturing Words and Worlds: Translation of Indigenous Knowledge through Maps, Objects, and Bodies in New Spain (1602), Irina Saladin
11. Running like the Rarámuri? Jesuit Miracle Stories and the Appropriation of Indigenous Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, Simon Siemianowski
12. They Are Like Us: Knowledge of Tibetan Religion in the Early Letters of Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), Rafael Streib
13. Researching Arabic in Eighteenth-Century Göttingen: Johann David Michaelis and the Human Sources for his Arabic Grammar (1781), Tobias P. Graf
Part III: Living at a Distance: The Global Lives of Knowledge
14. “To be Versed in the Greater Part of Christendom:” Two Sixteenth-Century Father-Son How-Tos for Early Modern Germany and Spain (and Beyond), Adrian Masters
15. Planning the Intercontinental Circulation of Persons, Objects, and Ideas: The Formula of the Jesuit Congregation of Procurators (Rome, 1581), Fabian Fechner
16. Receiving News from the World in the Moluccas in the 1620s: A German's Report, Philip Hahn
17. Overcoming Distance: Information, Environment, and Imperial Power between Spain and Charcas, 1657, Adolfo Polo y La Borda
18. Moving Experts, Moving Expertise: Knowledge, Mobility, and Spanish Imperial Governance in Late Seventeenth-Century Panama, Marie C. Schreier
19. A Disputed Eden: François Leguat's Description of Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean (1691–1693), Lionel Laborie
Conclusion: Reframing Global Knowledge through Primary Sources, Philip Hahn, Anne Mariss, Laura Dierksmeier
Appendix with Maps
Glossary
Index
Product details
| Published | 04 Mar 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 9781350628977 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 26 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 234 x 156 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |

























