The Perfection of Nature : Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance

**A deep history of how Renaissance Italy and the Spanish empire were shaped by a lingering fascination with breeding.** The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but there is a dark undercurrent to this fêted era of history. The same men and women who offered profound advancements in European understanding of the human condition—and laid the foundations of the Scientific Revolution—were also obsessed with controlling that condition and the wider natural world. Tracing early modern artisanal practice, Mackenzie Cooley shows how the idea of race and theories of inheritance developed through animal breeding in the shadow of the Spanish Empire. While one strand of the Renaissance celebrated a liberal view of human potential, another limited it by biology, reducing man to beast and prince to stud. “Race,” Cooley explains, first referred to animal stock honed through breeding. To those who invented the concept, race was not inflexible, but the fragile result of reproductive work. As the Spanish empire expanded, the concept of race moved from nonhuman to human animals. Cooley reveals how, as the dangerous idea of controlled reproduction was brought to life again and again, a rich, complex, and ever-shifting language of race and breeding was born. Adding nuance and historical context to discussions of race and human and animal relations, __The Perfection of Nature__ provides a close reading of undertheorized notions of generation and its discontents in the more-than-human world. "The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but, as Mackenzie Cooley uncovers in this timely book, there is a dark parallel to this fêted era. Those same men and women who were offering profound advancements in our understanding of the human condition-and laying the foundations of the Scientific Revolution-were also obsessed with controlling that condition and the wider natural world. Cooley traces how the Renaissance world, from the Mediterranean to Mexico City to the high mountains of the Andes, was marked by a lingering fascination with breeding. While one strand of the Renaissance celebrated a liberal view of human potential, another limited it by biology, reducing man to beast and prince to stud. 'Race,' Cooley explains, first referred to animal stock honed through breeding. And, to those who invented the concept, race was not inflexible but the fragile result of reproductive work. She follows these early modern breeders' work with Italian horses, Mesoamerican dogs, Andean camelids, and other creatures, discussing it in tandem with natural philosophers' efforts to make sense of inheritance, modification, and the new concept of race. In doing so, she shows how, as the Spanish empire expanded, the concept of race moved from nonhuman to human animals"-- Provided by publisher Contents List of Illustrations A Note on Terms and Orthography Maps Introduction Part I Knowing and Controlling Animal Generation Part II A Divergence in Breeding Part III A Brave New Natural World Part IV Difference in European Thought Epilogue Acknowledgments Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index