A New World of Animals : Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America

"Many Early Modern Europeans who during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries travelled to the New World left written or pictorial records of their encounters with a surprising fauna. The story told in this book is woven out of the threads of those texts and pictures. A New World of Animals shows how the initial wonder at the new beasts gave way to a more utilitarian approach, assessing their economic and medical potential, it elucidates how shifts in European perceptions brought the animals from the realm of the fantastic into the mainstream of early modern natural history, while at the same time changing the way in which Europeans saw their own world. Indeed, the chronicles and treatises of those who in the wake of the discovery arrived in the new lands tell as much about the particular interests and mental worlds of the writers as about the 'new animals'." "This book traces the amazement of the first explorers and colonizers, the chronicles of soldiers and Indians, the 'natural histories of the New World', the place of animals in the network of economic interests driving the early expansion of Europe, the views of the missionaries and those of natural philosophers and physicians. Taking the reader from the Brazilian forests to the erudite cabinets of the Old World, from Patagonia to the centres of empire, the story of the discovery of the unexpected menagerie of the New World is also an exploration of Early Modern European imagination and learning."--Jacket Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1 The Unexpected Menagerie of the New World Columbus: First Contact with American Animals The Letters of the Physicians Vespucci Pinzón and a Curious Animal Cabral and the ‘Land of the Parrots’ Fernández de Enciso and Roger Barlow: Geography, Animals and Empire The Animals of Patagonia 2 Soldiers and Amerindians Hernán Cortés and the Menagerie of Tenochtitlán The Mercenary and the Hero: Two Views on the Animals of the River Plate and Paraguay Pedro Cieza de León: the Animals of a Soldier–Historian The Brazilian Zoo of a German Among the Tupi Vargas Machuca: a Handbook for the Conquistador Animals in an Aztec Encyclopaedia. Bernardino de Sahagún and his General History of the Things of New Spain The Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso 3 The New Histories of the New World The Letters of an Italian Humanist. Peter Martyr and his Decades Francisco Fernández de Oviedo, the Pliny of the New World A Chronicle of the Conquest. López de Gómara’s General History of the Indies Aristotle and the New World. José de Acosta and his Natural and Moral History of the Indies The Relaciones of the Indies and Herrera’s General History of the Deeds of the Castilians The Natural Histories of the New World 4 Joyful and Profitable News from the New World. Animals, Medicine and Commerce Francisco Hernández and his History of the Animals of New Spain Animal Drugs: Monardes’s Medicinal History and Ximénez’s Four Books Exotic Animals. Knowledge and Interests. Clusius and his Exotica Georg Markgraf and Willem Piso. The Dutch West India Company and the Historia naturalis Brasiliae The Literature about the New World in Reformed Europe and the Expansion of the Northern Powers Useful and Strategic Knowledge on Animals of the New World 5 Learned Missionaries and Jesuit Scholars Fernão Cardim and his Treatise on the Land and the Climate of Brazil The Franciscan Claude d’Abbeville and the History of the mission of Capuchin Fathers to the Island of Maranhão Catholic and Calvinist Views on the Animals of French Brazil Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and his Historia naturae maxime peregrinae Athanasius Kircher: Noah’s Ark, a Wondrous Museum and Animal Magnetism Gaspar Schott and his Physica curiosa 6 New World Animals and Shifting Conceptions of Natural History Natural Philosophy and Philological Quibbles. Cardano vs Julius Caesar Scaliger Brazilian Birds and the Classics. Belon and L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux Animals in a Jungle of Words. Gesner’s Historia animalium New World Animals Play a Role in the Theatre of Nature. Aldrovandi and his Historia animalium The ‘Who’s Who’ of Seventeenth-Century Natural History. John Jonston and his Encyclopaedia on Animals New World Animals and the ‘Scientific Revolution’ The Loss of an Enchanted View Conclusions Bibliography Index Shows how the wonder at the beasts gave way to a utilitarian approach, assessing their medical potential. This book traces the amazement of the explorers and colonizers, the chronicles of soldiers and Indians, the natural histories of the New World, and the place of animals in the network of interests driving the early expansion of Europe. When Columbus set sail in 1492, he expected to find Cathay and the kingdom of the Great Khan, the pearls of Cipangu, species, gold, riches, perhaps the marvels of India, the biblical islands of Ophir, Saba, Tarshish, the distant Taprobana, the Aurea Chersonese and, without being aware of it, he found a new land.