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Knowledge, Power and Nature 1500-1700 - Term 1 Week 10

Seminar Reading

Barrera, Antonio, ‘Local Herbs, Global Medicines: Commerce, Knowledge, and Commodities in Spanish America,’ in Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Pamela H. Smith & Paula Findlen, London & New York, 2002.

Daniela Bleichmar, “Books, Bodies and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica. In Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia, 2007), 83-99.

Seminar/Essay Questions

  • Is trade an important issue to consider in regard to the Scientific Revolution?
  • Do you think the Scientific Revolution needs to be rewritten in terms of global exchanges of objects? Are objects shaping human action and thought and are therefore important to take into account?

Further Reading

Aram, Bethany, Yun-Casalilla, Bartholome, eds. Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1824: Circulation, Resistance and Diversity (London, 2014).

Bauer, Arnold, Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge, 2001).

Brewer, John and Porter, Roy, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods. London and New York (London, 1893).

Cook, Harold J., ‘Time’s Bodies: Crafting the Preparations and Preservations of Naturalia,’ Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York and London, 2001), pp. 223-247.

-- Cook, Harold J., ‘Global Economies and Local Knowledge in the East Indies: Jacobus Bontius Learns the Facts of Nature, in Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan. (Philadelphia, 2005), pp. 100-118.

Jardine, Lisa, Wordly Gods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York, 1996).

Keay, John, The Spice Route: A History (London 2005).

Mark S.R. Jenner and Patrick Wallis, eds., Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, c.1450- c.1850 (London, 2007).

Meadow, Mark, ‘Merchants and Marvels: Hans Jacob Fugger and the Origins of the Wunderkammer’, in Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York/London, 2002), pp. 182-200.

Patrick Wallis, “Introduction: The Growth of Early Modern Medical Economy.' Special issue: Changes in Medical Care. Journal of Social History 49, no 3 (2016): 447-482.

Weissburg, Liliane, The Culture of Exchange: Real and Imagined Markets in the Low Countries, 1500-1800 (???)

Varela, Consuelo, ‘The Difficult Beginnings: Columbus as a Mediator of New World Products,’ in Global Goods and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1824: Circulation, Resistance and Diversity, ed. by Aram, Bethany, Yun-Casalilla, Bartholome (London, 2014), pp. 38-52.