The Globe on Paper : Writing Histories of the World in Renaissance Europe and the Americas

"The age of exploration exposed the limits of available universal histories. Everyday interactions with cultures and societies across the globe brought to light a multiplicity of pasts which proved difficult to reconcile with an emerging sense of unity in the world. Among the first to address the questions posed by this challenge were a handful of Renaissance historians. On what basis could they narrate the history of hitherto unknown peoples? Why did the Bible and classical works say nothing about so many visible traces of ancient cultures? And how far was it possible to write histories of the world at a time of growing religious division in Europe and imperial rivalry around the world? 0A study of the cross-fertilization of historical writing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, The Globe on Paper reconstructs a set of imaginative accounts worked out from Mexico to the Moluccas and Peru, and from the shops of Venetian printers to the rival courts of Spain and England. The pages of this book teem with humanists, librarians, missionaries, imperial officials, as well as forgers and indigenous chroniclers. Drawing on information gathered-or said to have been gathered-from eyewitness reports, interviews with local inhabitants, ancient codices, and material evidence, their global narratives testify to an unprecedented broadening of horizons which briefly flourished before succumbing to the forces of imperial and religious reaction." -- prové de l'editor Cover 1 The Globe on Paper: Writing Histories of the World in Renaissancem Europe and the Americas 4 Copyright 5 Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Introduction: Renaissance Historians and the World 12 Old Worlds and the Globe 15 Recovering a Global Renaissance 20 Chapters in Renaissance Histories of the World 25 1 Genealogical Histories: Forging Antiquities from New Spain to China 28 Franciscan Antiquarians in the New World 28 The First Inhabitants of New Spain 32 The Indian Descendants of Noah 37 The Renaissance Archforger and His Giants 42 Berosus Across the Atlantic 49 Inventing Genealogies from the New World to China 54 2 Histories in Motion: Thinking Back to the Moluccas in a Lisbon Hospital 60 News from the East 60 The Chinese Lesson of Empire 64 Moluccan Tales 70 The Renaissance of Travels 76 A World on the Move 82 Northern Obsessions with the Americas 86 3 Indigenous Comparisons: A Renaissance Bestseller in the Colonial Andes 91 Chronicling the World from Peru 91 From the Andes to Bavaria 97 An Ambivalent Encyclopaedia 102 The Effect of History 107 Cultural Hierarchy 111 The Enigma of the ‘Yndiario’ 116 4 Popular Accounts: Printing Histories of the World in Late Renaissance Venice 123 Histories for Sale 123 History of the World and Curiosity for the World 130 History as an Animal 136 Untitled 142 In Defence of the History of the World 146 5 The Twilight of Histories of the World: Jesuit Missions and Imperial Rivalries 154 Missionary Histories 154 Nature and Culture 160 The Birth of World Geopolitics 165 Histories of the World as Official History 172 At the End of Histories of the World 178 Conclusions 185 Bibliography 190 Archival sources 190 Published primary sources 190 Secondary literature 197 Index 218 "The age of exploration exposed the limits of available universal histories. Everyday interactions with cultures and societies across the globe brought to light a multiplicity of pasts which proved difficult to reconcile with an emerging sense of unity in the world. Among the first to address the questions posed by this challenge were a handful of Renaissance historians. On what basis could they narrate the history of hitherto unknown peoples? Why did the Bible and classical works say nothing about so many visible traces of ancient cultures? And how far was it possible to write histories of the world at a time of growing religious division in Europe and imperial rivalry around the world? 0A study of the cross-fertilization of historical writing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, The Globe on Paper reconstructs a set of imaginative accounts worked out from Mexico to the Moluccas and Peru, and from the shops of Venetian printers to the rival courts of Spain and England. The pages of this book teem with humanists, librarians, missionaries, imperial officials, as well as forgers and indigenous chroniclers. Drawing on information gathered-or said to have been gathered-from eyewitness reports, interviews with local inhabitants, ancient codices, and material evidence, their global narratives testify to an unprecedented broadening of horizons which briefly flourished before succumbing to the forces of imperial and religious reaction." -- prové de l'editor