The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World (Writing the Early Americas)

The Age of the Discovery of the Americas was concurrent with the Age of Discovery in science. In The Alchemy of Conquest, Ralph Bauer explores the historical relationship between the two, focusing on the connections between religion and science in the Spanish, English, and French literatures about the Americas during the early modern period. As sailors, conquerors, travelers, and missionaries were exploring "new worlds," and claiming ownership of them, early modern men of science redefined what it means to "discover" something. Bauer explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the discovery of the Americas and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. The book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of late medieval alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, José de Acosta, Nicolás Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt. Cover Page 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 10 Illustrations 12 Acknowledgments 16 Introduction: Alchemy and Apocalypse in Macondo 20 Part I: The Alchemy of Exception 66 1. The Hermeneutics of Secrecy: Aristotle and Discovery 68 2. Egyptian Gold: Alchemy and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages 94 3. The Alchemy of Conversion: Ramón Llull’s Chivalric Missionary Science 124 Part II: The Alchemy of Conquest 152 4. The Secrets of the World: Christopher Columbus’s Ecstatic Materialism 154 5. The Llullian Renaissance and European Expansionism 203 6. Physicians of the Soul: The Alchemy of Reduction and Ethno­demonology in Early America 232 Part III: Lucretius’s New World 284 7. Cannibal Heterotopias in the Sixteenth Century 286 8. Homunculus americanus 309 9. The Blood of the Dragon: Alchemy and New World Materia Medica 356 Part IV: The Alchemy of the White Legend 386 10. Walter Raleigh’s Legends: Black, Gold, and White 388 11. Things of Darkness: Alchemy, Ethno­demonology, and the Protestant Cant of Conquest 420 12. Eating Bacon: Alchemy and Cannibal Science 449 Coda: Alexander von Humboldt, Alchemist of the Tropics 490 Notes 506 Index 644 "This book explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the conquest of America and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. While the roots of the modern 'conquistadorial' attitude toward nature lie in late medieval alchemy, which fused Aristotelian reason with Christian apocalypticism in the militant context of crusade and spiritual conquest, this book argues that the modern idea of what it means to discover something has a colonial history in which conquest legitimated the modern (Baconian) idea of discovery by underwriting it with religious messianism and early modern state power. Thus, the book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of such late medieval alchemists as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, José de Acosta, Nicolás Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt"-- Provided by publisher "This book explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the conquest of America and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. While the roots of the modern 'conquistadorial' attitude toward nature lie in late medieval alchemy, which fused Aristotelian reason with Christian apocalypticism in the militant context of crusade and spiritual conquest, this book argues that the modern idea of what it means to discover something has a colonial history in which conquest legitimated the modern (Baconian) idea of discovery by underwriting it with religious messianism and early modern state power. Thus, the book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of such late medieval alchemists as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Jose de Acosta, Nicolás Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt"-- Provided by publisher