The Invention of Humboldt: On the Geopolitics of Knowledge

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Series Editors’ Introduction
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Under Humboldt’s Footsteps
	Chapter Synopses
	Notes
Chapter 1: The Apotheosis of Humboldt during the Nineteenth Century
	Building a Transatlantic Scientific Network
	A Sage for All Tastes
	Notes
Chapter 2: A Sense of Place: Early Modern Roots of Humboldt’s Natural History Practices
	Plants and Rocks
	Fieldwork and a Sense of Place
	Early Modern Fieldwork
	Sites of Knowledge
	Humboldt’s Personal Links with the Early Modern Scientific Tradition
	Humboldt’s Style of Doing Science
	Notes
Chapter 3: Six Days on Tenerife: The Making of Humboldt’s Tropical Antique
	The Pico del Teide and the Dragon Tree
	Alexander von Humboldt: Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Artist
	The Shaping of Humboldt’s Aesthetic Sensibility
	The Tropical Antique
	Invention and Publication
	Notes
Chapter 4: Caldas and Humboldt in the Andes: Who Invented Biogeography?
	Imbabura: A Formal Scenario for Caldas’s Biogeography
	Chimborazo: A Formal Scenario for Humboldt’s Andean Biogeography
	Synchronicities and Asymmetries
	Conclusions
	Notes
Chapter 5: An Archaeology of Mutis’s Disappearing Gift to Humboldt
	The Unlikely Encounter
	The Exchanges
	Mutis and His Flora de Bogotá in the Works of Humboldt and Bonpland
	Because Words Always Contain Truths
	Final Considerations and New Challenges
	Notes
Chapter 6: Incas, Pyramids, and Amazons: Notes on Humboldt’s Equatorial Encounters
	Notes
Chapter 7: Humboldt’s Magic Mountain
	The Fame of the Mountains
	Sublime Images
	A Magical Place
	Notes
Chapter 8: Peruvian Desencuentro : Humboldt’s Fog, Unanue’s Light
	The ‘Second Columbus’ Belatedly Discovers America
	Humboldt’s Dark and Melancholy Peru
	Unanue’s Brilliant and Ingenious Peru
	Humboldt’s Face
	Burying the Baron’s Footprints
	Notes
Chapter 9: Air in a Flask: The Mexican Making of Humboldt’s Objects of Knowledge
	Erythronium: The (Un)making of a Metal
	Cochineal: ‘The dye which exists as long as Indians tend to it’
	Xochicalco: Fragments for a Universal History of Civilisation
	Concluding Reflections
	Notes
Chapter 10: Humboldt’s Misreading of the Mercantilist Face of New Spain
	Harmony of Interests and Government Intervention
	Society, Demography, and Economy in Broad Perspective
	The Economic Valuation of Goods
	Conclusion
	Notes
Chapter 11: Bonpland’s Cactus, Or Trafficking in Exotics and Ignorance
	The Cactaceae in Europe
	Inventing the Cactus
	Josephine’s Heated Gardens and a Rose-Flowered Fig of the Indies
	The Voyage and the Cacti
	Notes
Chapter 12: Humboldt’s Columbus, Or the Iberian Worlds that Humboldt Ignored
	On Things Forgotten.
	Global Physics and the Two ‘Planets’ of the Hispanic Monarchy
	Archives and Knowledge or Ignorance of the New World
	In the Footsteps of Humboldtian Ignorance
	Notes
Index