Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500&1501800 [Hardcover]

This collection of essays is the first book published in English to provide a thorough survey of the practices of science in the Spanish and Portuguese empires from 1500 to 1800. Authored by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the United States, Latin America, and Europe, the book consists of fifteen original essays, as well as an introduction and an afterword by renowned scholars in the field. The topics discussed include navigation, exploration, cartography, natural sciences, technology, and medicine. This volume is aimed at both specialists and non-specialists, and is designed to be useful for teaching. It will be a major resource for anyone interested in colonial Latin America.

This excellent volume of essays brings together a wide variety of scholars from a variety of disciplines, countries, and continents- art historians, literary scholars, and historians based in the United Stated, Spain, Northern Ireland, Brazil. Portugal, and England. This very solid and well-edited collection . . . clearly demonstrates that early modern science was alive and well south of the Pyrenees and that Iberians were pioneers in many fields of scientific inquiry. The collection would work well in a graduate seminar, providing numerous dynamic starting points for any number of future projects based on the subjects it contains. Individually, the essays have a strong archival base, clear focus and fascinating detail. Following the guide of the last essay, this volume includes many illustrationsa visual reminder of scientific advances. As a group, they demonstrate that science helped build and shape the empires as much as the bureaucrats and merchants of the colonial period. For scholars and students of Latin American, American and European history, as well as the history of medicine, this is a valuable starting-point for understanding how science and technology were integral to the economy and expanding empires by improving transportation, mining, medicine and otherl33