Connecting Territories

Simona Boscani Leoni, Ph.D. (2003, EHESS Paris), is Swiss National Science Foundation-Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Bern and senior scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Most recently she edited “Unglaubliche Bergwunder”. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer und Graubünden. Ausgewählte Briefe, 1699–1707 (2019); an extended edition of this correspondence can be found online: https://hallernet.org.Sarah Baumgartner, Ph.D. (2019, University of Bern) holds an MA in History and a BSc in Geography. Her research interests include the history of scientific societies of the eighteenth century and early modern agriculture.Meike Knittel, Ph.D. (2018, University of Bern), is a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and an associated researcher at the University of Bern’s Historical Institute. Her research focuses on natural history of collections and eighteenth-century botany.

"Questa raccolta di saggi offre un ricco contributo alla storia dei processi di esplorazione e di scambio e accumulazione di conoscenze che hanno dato forma al sapere scientifico europeo in epoca moderna, con particolare riguardo alla fine del Settecento, un momento di accelerazione e infittimento di comunicazioni e spostamenti a livello globale."---- Giulia Iannuzzi, in: Annali Recensioni Online VI, 2023/3 "Connecting territories unites ten authors in a comparative history of how people learned to survey land, its inhabitants and its products, from Spanish America to Switzerland, the Apennines to the Himalaya. […] the volume shows how local scientific practices became increasingly globally co-ordinated in the long eighteenth century."---- Patrick Anthony, in: Archives of Natural History, November 2022, Vol. 49, No. 2: pp. 426-27.

• ContentsList of Figures and TablesList of Contributors1 Introduction: From Switzerland to the IndiesSimona Boscani Leoni, Sarah Baumgartner and Meike Knittelpart 1: Naturalists’ Methods2 Between the Americas and Europe: Mapping Territories through Questionnaires, 16th–18th CenturiesSimona Boscani Leoni3 (Re-)Shaping a Method: Field Research and Experimental Legacy in Vallisneri’s Primi Itineris Specimen (1705)Francesco Luzzini4 Flora Near and Far: Accumulating Knowledge on Plants in Eighteenth-Century ZurichMeike Knittel5 The Secrets of Indians: Native Knowers in Enlightenment Natural Histories of the Southern AmericasStefanie Gängerpart 2: Authorities’ and Societies’ Strategies6 Change and Continuity: The Bureaucracy of Knowledge in South AmericaIrina Podgorny7 Questionnaires, Parish Registers and Prize Competitions: The Zurich Physical Society’s Sources and Methods for Surveying the TerritorySarah Baumgartner8 Social Anthropology avant la lettre: The Economic Enlightenment Perspective on Traditional Uses of WetlandsMartin Stuberpart 3: Defining Territories9 Divergent Perception: Deserts and Mountains in Transition to Modernity, seen through Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of NatureJon Mathieu10 Alpine Landscapes of Health: The Swiss Whey Cure and Therapeutic Tourism between 1750 and 1870Barbara Orland11 Creation of “Scientific” Knowledge: The Asiatick Society and Exploration of the Himalaya, 1784–1850Chetan SinghIndex