Description
Book SynopsisIn the mid-18th century, the French naturalist Buffon contended that the New World was in fact geologically new and that it had recently emerged from the water. This text looks at the debate surrounding the geological history of the New World, and the effect on historiographical concepts.
Trade Review"In view of the breakthrough represented by the achievements of this book, strikingly heterodox and impressively persuasive interpretations of the 'dispute of the New World,' it is of cardinal importance in several fields of history: Latin America, the Spanish monarchy, Enlightenment, historiography, and New World cultural encounters."—Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Oxford University
"Refreshes our understanding of the colonial past and of the origins of the independence movements in the New World. A masterpiece of scholarly ingenuity."—
The Economist (Books of the Year)
"The year's best monograph: a startling excavation in Latin America's mental pre-history."—
The Independent"A model of scholarship. . . . Explains how Latin America began to form, before independence, in colonial minds. The author leads the reader into beguiling labyrinths: Boturini's lost library, Palenque's ruins, Enlightenment rivalries."—
Times Literary Supplement"This is an extraordinarily ambitious and illuminating book on the search for new historical narratives in eighteenth-century New Spain. It is a remarkable journey of discovery, a veritable history of historiography for the late colonial period."—William B. Taylor, University of California, Berkeley
"A profound, thoroughly researched, persuasively argued, seminal text about the nuances of history and its perception over 200 years ago,
How to Write the History of the New World is very highly recommended reading for students of western hemispheric history and a core addition to academic reference collections."—
The Bookwatch"Canizares-Esguerra's study skillfully explains the epistemological origins of the dispute of the New World and rescues a vibrant Spanish-American intellectual world from undeserved obscurity. General collections and advanced undergraduates and above."—
ChoiceThis is a work of prodigious learning, with potentially far-reaching implications for the intellectual history of the early modern Atlantic world. It creatively adapts recent themes in the histiography of early modern science to offer a new approach to the 'dispute of the New World.'"—
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History"Canizares-Esguerra proves a provocative model to inspire future Atlantic intellectual histories, in which both Northern and Southern metropolitans and colonials (engaging, also, the documents and artifacts of native peoples) think and write not in provincial isolation, but in complex, trans-oceanic dialogue."—
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History“There can be no doubt about the tremendous achievements of this book . . . .In an account that can only be described as magisterial for its impressive command of an enormous archive, the erudition of its philosophical scholarship, and the tour-de-force of its scope, Jorge Canizares-Esguerra’s book will be indispensable in our quest for a more global and comprehensive understanding of New World historiography, ‘the Enlightenment,’ and the making of modernity in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.”—
William and Mary QuartleryTable of ContentsList of illustrations Introduction 1. Towards a new art of reading and new historical interpretations 2. Changing european interpretations of the reliability of indigenous sources 3. Historiography and patriotism in Spain 4. The making of a 'patriontic epistemology' 5. Whose enlightenment was it anyway? Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.
