ABSTRACTS - Krieger School of Arts & Sciences

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ABSTRACTS
Justin Rivest (JHU)
Almanacs, Prophecy and Power in the New World from Columbus to Tenskwatawa.
The paper will examine the political and religious uses of eclipses and eclipse prediction in
European encounters with Native Americans. From Columbus onward, European explorers and
missionaries often brought printed almanacs or celestial ephemerides with them on their
voyages. These tools, which tabulated the mean positions of celestial bodies at daily intervals for
years in advance, were primarily used for navigational purposes, but they also could be used to
forecast portentous celestial events, notably solar and lunar eclipses (the latter also being
necessary for determining longitude). Strategically deployed predictions could be used to
impress or frighten native peoples, in a usage of the ephemerides that closely mirrors that of their
other important users, namely astrologers. Though most accounts of early contact between
natives and Europeans focus on technologies like gunpowder or steel, my paper will demonstrate
that an ephemeris or almanac was also a technology that could be deployed by Europeans to gain
an epistemic edge over the peoples they encountered in the New World.
I will explore their use in three instructive case studies spanning the early modern period. The
paper begins by considering the first use of this stratagem by Christopher Columbus while
marooned on Jamaica in 1504, where he not only made use of a lunar eclipse to estimate his
longitude, but also predicted it in advance as a sign of divine wrath in order to secure a continued
supply of food from the natives there. It then moves to the French Pays d’en haut (the modern
Great Lakes region), where it explores how Jesuit missionaries employed the same tactic, with
variable results, among the Huron in the 1630s and 40s. While the power to predict was initially
used by the Jesuits to gain credit over competing shamans, it existed in tension with the goals of
Christian conversion and later even served as evidence in the Huron suspicion that the Jesuits
were sorcerers who had brought pestilence to their lands during the “virgin soil” epidemics of the
late 1630s. The paper will then conclude by analysing an instance in 1806 where the Shawnee
prophet Tenskwatawa, the brother of Tecumseh, made use of a solar eclipse to rally surrounding
tribes against white settler encroachment to the southern Great Lakes area, and will evaluate
whether it constitutes a native appropriation of European prediction techniques. Throughout, the
paper will consider both European and native attitudes to eclipses, the nature of an eclipse as a
sign or portent to be interpreted, and the role of eclipse prediction in larger political and religious
struggles.
Jean-Olivier Richard (JHU)
Minding American Magic: What Père Lafiteau learned from the New World Diviner
In 1724, Jesuit scholar Joseph François Lafitau published his Moeurs des sauvages américains
comparées aux moeurs des premiers temps, an elaborate system of symbolic theology aiming to
demonstrate the fundamental unity underlying the religion and customs of American “sauvages”
and those of ancient “barbarians”. At once an apologist’s defense of the truths of Christianity, a
missionary’s encyclopedia of American Indian customs, and a classicist’s inquiry into the
beginnings of civilization, this work provides rich examples of “epistemic exchange” between
the Old and the New world. While scholars have shown the intricacies, the logic and the
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paradoxes of Lafitau’s system, they have generally failed to anchor their reading of the Moeurs
in the Jesuit’s intellectual and institutional context, and in the specific controversies in which
he was taking part. In order to better integrate the Jesuit’s work in the history of Enlightenment
science, this paper focuses on one particular aspect of the Moeurs des sauvages, namely,
Lafitau’s discussion of American magic, exploring the interesting connections that the Jesuit
draws between the natives’ “superstitions”, their conception of the soul, and the European
classical and contemporary perspectives on these topics. I argue that Lafitau’s inquiry is
motivated not only by his apologetic desire to find evidence for the existence of a spiritual world,
but also by a genuine academic interest in magic, as a means to shed light on ancient
mysteries and address other contemporaries debates in Europe. Nuancing the traditional narrative
of decline, Lafitau’s confrontation of and reflections on non-European magic gives us precious
insight into the fate that the so-called “occult sciences” underwent in the early eighteenth
century.
Antonella Romano (EUI)
Between Beijing, Mexico, Rome, and Paris: the writing of a revolution in the 1650’s
The aim of the paper is to analyze the part played by Mexico, the capital of New Spain, in the
shaping of European knowledge about China between the end of the 16th century, when the first
European catholic missionaries settled in the Ming Empire, and the end of the 17th century,
when France and Portugal faced each other on the Chinese arena, in their competing colonial
projects. The paper is based on two working hypotheses:
- The city developed, during the early modern period, a broad set of political, social and
intellectual resources, which implemented the role of Mexico as a hub connecting Europe and
China and allowing the production of a specific and distinctive knowledge about China. The
focus will be mainly on natural history and chronology, as epistemologically intertwined in the
plural and discontinue production of knowledge about China.
- Such knowledge, circulated in Europe, mainly but not exclusively, through Catholic networks,
has been influential, despite confessional and political borders, in the (re)definition of
seventeenth-century European understanding of China.
Two main books will be at the center of the analysis: Martino Martini’s, De Bello Tartarico
Historia (Antwerp, 1654), Juan de Palafox’s, Historia de la conquista de la China por el tartaro
(Paris, 1670). An analysis of the conditions of production and circulation of these two books, in
relation with other non-published sources, will offer the opportunity to sketch out a contrasted
map of European interests for China.
José Luis Gasch-Tomás (EUI)
The Euro-Asian Encounter in Perspective: Reception and Consumption of Chinese Goods in
the Hispanic World, c. 1600
From the sixteenth century onwards, the world was entangled as had not hitherto been the case.
The golden age of commerce in India and Southeast Asia, the European overseas enterprises in
the Atlantic Ocean and Asia, and the profound economic changes of the Americas led to a
process in the world which had as central characteristic the clash and convergence of prior and
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new social networks. This process of worldwide entanglement (and its interruptions) can be seen
from the perspective of the long-distance circulation and consumption of goods. Among other
products, the Asian manufactured goods, particularly the Chinese products, were central in the
global trade of the early modern period. The Chinese porcelains, silks and furniture have been
usually seen as goods which were consumed in Europe after being traded and exchanged by
silver through the commercial networks of the Indian Ocean. However, these luxury products
also circulated in other regions of the world. The Asian goods were traded from Manila to
Acapulco via the Manila galleons, and then from Acapulco other areas of the Americas and the
Iberian Peninsula. At the same time that these import goods circulated, they were consumed by
local elites, merchants, clergymen, artisans and very diverse groups of people, above all in the
American case.
By comparing the consumption, uses and meanings of Asian manufactured goods in two
Hispanic cities, one American -Mexico City- and one European -Seville- this paper addresses a
part of this story. The paper attempts, firstly, to show to what extent more people consumed
more Asian products in the Americas than in Castile; secondly, to decipher the cultural
mechanisms that explain the relative tastes of the Creole and Castilian elites when consuming
Asian goods; and thirdly, how the circulation of Asian objects from the Philippines to the
Americas transmitted a better knowledge (geography, customs, etc.) of Asia, particularly of
China, to the Creole of the Americas than to the elites of Castile by the early 17th century.
Katherine Arner (JHU)
Preserving Etienne Cathalan’s World of Exchange: Commerce, Warfare and the Growth of
Health Diplomacy in the 18th century
This paper recovers an overlooked medical actor in the eighteenth-century medical world: the
commercial agent. Over the course of this period, commercial agents and consuls became an
increasingly prominent component of international relations and statecraft as European and new
Atlantic polities jostled in the arena of Atlantic commerce. As commerce and warfare
introduced new patterns of disease and medical exchange to port cities in the Atlantic (and
Mediterranean), commercial agents and consuls began taking on and creating new roles in
disease control and medicine. They kept tabs on mortality rates, established disease surveillance
networks, translated health regulations and medical writings, navigated medical cultures abroad
and even wrote treatises. As these commercial agents interacted with new ecologies and medical
cultures abroad, they helped reshape surveillance practices and ideas about disease; they also
helped remap cultural geographies of the medical world. By recovering and historicizing the
knowledge, practices and communities of these worldly agents, this paper seeks to nuance our
understanding of the relationship between the Atlantic political economy and the eighteenthcentury medical world.
Irene Fattacciu (EUI)
Exotic Products, Public Debate and Cultural Appropriation in the 18th century: the Spanish
Case in Comparative Perspective
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In my paper I will follow as a leading thread chocolate in its European diffusion during the 18th
century. I will focus on the way in which medical and scientific knowledge was manipulated
throughout the process of appropriation which took place in its diffusion from the colonies to
Spain and later to the other European countries. One of the most evident signs of this transition
was the transformation of chocolate’s recipes, preparation and medical prescriptions. Also in the
18th century chocolate had indeed continued being a subject of interest for religious, doctors,
intellectuals and public opinion; in particular the norms and practices of medicine played an
important role in dictating the terms of chocolate’s assimilation. Through the study of recipes
and of the changes in norms and prescriptions, we can deepen on the one hand the role of Spain
as a "civilizing agent" and the source of chocolate’s diffusion, a mediator between the New and
Old Worlds. On the other we can also introduce the importance that the appropriation of exotic
goods through medicine played in the rise of rival national culinary traditions in Europe towards
the end of the century. In this way, it is possible to take a look not only to the Atlantic dimension
of European expansion, but also to the importance of European fragmented and competing
realities in determining the terms of appropriation and also the role of this process in defining
different identities within Europe.
Tilmans Kulke (EUI)
Conflict and Emotions in an Early 18th-century Mughal-Chronicle. The Munshi Mustai'dd
Khan (d. 1724) at Work
The classical historical interpretation of early eighteenth-century India and its milieu is
dominated by the notion of the forthcoming decline of the Mughal empire. Grossly simplified,
this classic historical explanation argues that the empire’s decline was mainly caused by the
fundamentalist reign of the Mughal king Muḥammad Aurangzīb Ālamgīrī’s (gov.10681118/1658-1707), who sharply distanced himself from the tolerant politic of his ancestors. He
therefore provoked the religious majority of the Hindus and destroyed the old system of religious
tolerance practiced by the Mogul kings from Akbar on. This classical narrative has drawn
criticism from a few scholars. However, despite the important studies of Subrahmanyam, Alam
and Bhatia, the view of Aurangzīb as a fundamental Muslim and temple destroyer seems to
remain as stable as ever – or even worse: in a time of collective paranoia against everything
connected to the word “Islam”, the role and the view of Islam in India, mainly represented by
Aurangzīb, is probably worse than at any time since India’s Independence in 1947. My goal is to
contribute to a better understanding of the early eighteenth-century Islamic discourse in Mughal
India by adopting the approaches of “transcultural narratology”.
Marta Hanson (JHU)
European memory palaces and Chinese bodily arts of memory: The role of Jesuits
in circulating ars memorativa between Europe and China (1596-1780)
Fourteen years after arriving in China in 1582, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)
published a book titled Xiguo jifa 西國記法 (Western ars memorativa, 1596) to introduce the
Governor of Jiangxi province— his Chinese patron—to the European tradition of arts of
memory. He thought such novel mnemotechniques might open Chinese hearts to Christ. This ars
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memorativa entered China, however, just when it was losing traction in Europe. His creative
projection of Chinese characters on architectural elements—“the Memory Palace”— never
caught traction in China. Despite considerable evidence by the sixteenth century of a wide range
of Chinese memory practices, Ricci did not write about China’s own traditions of arts of
memory. Nearly two centuries later, by contrast, Jean Joseph Marie Amiot included in his
Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences et les arts des Chinois (Tome IV, 1780) an
illustration of a Chinese “main harmonique” to memorize the 12 Chinese halftones.
Although
evidence of hand mnemonics can be found in Europe since at least the 12th century, by the end
of the 18th century, however, Amiot felt compelled to explain to his European audience that
“Cette maniere de compter est très-aisée pour un Chinois; parce qu’il est accoutumé dès
l’enfance à supputer sur le champ l’intervalle d’une telle époque, d’une telle date, à telle autre.”
Although even some late 17th-century editions of the Exercices Spirituelles of Saint Ignatius of
Loyola (founder of the Jesuit order), printed images of hand mnemonics, later 18th-century
editions no longer did. This fact suggests that such bodily arts of memory had gone out of
fashion by then in Europe. On opposite ends of the temporal spectrum, these two examples
illustrate both Jesuit attempts to circulate ars memorativa between Europe and China as well as
the limitations of transmission in both directions. This paper thus examines the evidence of
Jesuits circulating knowledge of arts of memory between Europe and China from 1596 to 1780
and uses the concept of different epistemic regimes to explain their successes and failures.
Gianna Pomata (JHU)
Epistemic Genres across Cultures: Comparing the European “Observatio” and the Chinese
“An”.
My paper compares the emergence and development o f the medical case as an epistemic genre
in early modern Europe and China – two cultures that are eminently comparable in this respect
because they both had a long tradition of written medicine compiled by physicians-scholars. The
comparison is based on my own research for Europe, and for China on the excellent studies of
Charlotte Furth and other scholars. I find some remarkable similarities between the histories of
the genre in the two contexts. In both Europe and China, the medical case developed as a specific
form, with a distinctive name (respectively, observatio and an) roughly at the same time in the
sixteenth century, and had become an established genre among learned physicians by the
seventeenth. Both the observatio and the an originated from oral teaching in the context of
medical apprenticeship: case reports were at first transmitted orally from master to disciple and
then circulated as private record in manuscript within the teacher’s familia (in Europe) and
“lineage of learning” (in China). Similar is also the format of the two genres. In both early
modern Europe and early modern China, medical cases come in groups or sets, fundamentally of
two kinds: the case collection by a single author or the anthology of cases from several authors
(often spanning many centuries). The overall similarities between the observatio and the an are
striking: both found their nurturing ground in a wider culture characterized by a historicist
attitude that emphasized the temporal and geographic mutability of disease as well as of medical
practice. Both developed during the flourishing of religious and moral casuistry (the science of
moral situations) exemplified in Europe by the Jesuit “cases of conscience” and in China by the
neo-Confucian “cases of learning”. Given this remarkable pattern of similarities, were medical
cases part of the epistemic exchange between early Modern Europe and China? I will try to
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answer this question, while also discussing, more in general, whether and how medical cases can
“travel” across cultures.
María Portuondo (JHU)
Arias Montano in Antwerp: the Epistemic Basis of his Biblical Exegesis
While in Antwerp overseeing the publication of the Biblia Regia of Philip II (or Plantin’s
Antwerp Polyglot) Spanish exegete Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598) worked alongside some
of Europe’s leading orientalists who were specialists in the Near Eastern languages Chaledean
(Aramaic), Syriac and Hebrew. His collaboration with these scholars and immersion in the
linguistic world of the Near East culminated with the elaboration of the Apparatus, a reference
appendix to the Bible where he attempted, among other things, to reconstruct the historical,
geographical and natural historical worlds of the Bible.
This paper studies the epistemic approaches he deployed in that project. These drew from Near
Eastern linguistic strategies, antiquarian methodologies, historical narratives and cartography to
imagine the Holy Land as it might have been when the Bible was written.
Matthew Franco (JHU)
Cross Cultural Geographies: a Spaniard at the American Philosophical Society
Scholars have long recognized the importance of geography in eighteenth century science and
politics. Only recently, however, has the question of negotiated practices and epistemologies
begun to be examined as part of this historiography. This project will explore attempts by
geographers at the American Philosophical Society to negotiate differing geographic visions of
the American continent. Its primary focus will be the scientific work of José Joaquín Ferrer y
Cafranga (1763-1818). Ferrer spent the final years of the long eighteenth century in the
Americas and Caribbean, collecting geographic data of Spanish territories. Ferrer’s work,
however, crossed boundaries and while in the United States he often found himself in dialogue
with early republican figures. Despite an abundance of references to his surveying data by key
figures in the establishment of early republican geography, such as Major Andrew Ellicott,
Ferrer’s scientific work has received little attention.
This paper will attempt to both place Ferrer’s work in the context of Spanish
geography of the Caroline period, and to see how this Spanish style of surveying was
incorporated into American geography. It will examine what components of Ferrer’s
measurements were preserved and which were altered by the American Philosophical Society as
part of their quest to measure a new nation with scientific certainty.
Moritz von Brescius (EUI)
Imperial Surveys: The Schlagintweit Expedition to British India (1854-58)
In my paper, I will take the lives and careers of the three German scientific explorers, Hermann,
Adolph and Robert Schlagintweit as a lens through which to analyse the specific role of German
scholars for the expansion of other European imperial powers in the period ca. 1850s-1880s.
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Supported by the Court of Directors of the East India Company, the Royal Geographical Society,
the British Association, and co-financed by the Prussian king, the three German scholars
embarked on a large-scale surveying project to India, and also into hardly explored, but vital
regions beyond British control in Central Asia.
The analytic potential of the Schlagintweit case
lies in the fact that it shows how these scientific explorers from a country without colonies drew
upon the colonial infrastructure of the British to realise their own overseas ambitions, and what
kind of knowledge, personal experiences and objects they brought back with them to the German
lands. In this paper (based on as yet unexplored sources), I will show what impact their Indian
expedition had on scientific practices and institutions in the German lands, as is exemplified in
Hermann’s foundation of the Munich Geographical Society in 1869, the decisive role of their
amassed Indian collection for the creation of Jena’s Ethnographical Museum and other colonial
exhibitions, and Robert’s appointment to the Chair in geography and statistics in Gießen.
Moreover, Robert turned into a celebrated public lecturer on the British territories in Asia, and
delivered hundreds of speeches in front of commercial and scientific societies, thus helping to
integrate the German states into the knowledge networks of European imperialism in the middle
of the nineteenth century.
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