Routledge Studies in Global Latin America – serie

The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of decolonization during this formative period. It demonstrates that the pioneers of decolonization were not twentieth-century Frenchmen or Algerians but nineteenth-century Peruvians and Colombians. In doing so, it vastly expands the horizons of decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.

This book presents a cultural history of Latin America as seen through a symbolic good and a practice – the book, and the act of publication – two elements that have had an irrefutable power in shaping the modern world. The volume combines multiple theoretical approaches and empirical landscapes with the aim to comprehend how Latin American publishers became the protagonists of a symbolic unification of their continent from the 1930s through the 1970s. The Latin American focus responds to a central point in its history: the effective interdependence of the national cultures of the continent. Americanism, until the 1950s, or Latin Americanism, from the onset of the Cold War, were moral frameworks that guided publishers’ thinking and actions and had concrete effects on the process of regional integration. The illustration of how Latin American publishing markets were articulated opens up broader and comparative questions regarding the ways in which the ideas embodied in books also sought to unify other cultural areas. The intersection of cultural, political and economic themes, as well as the style of writing, makes this book an interest to a wide reading public with historical and sociological sensitivity and global cultural curiosity.

This book presents a cultural history of Latin America as seen through a symbolic good and a practice – the book, and the act of publication – two elements that have had an irrefutable power in shaping the modern world. The volume combines multiple theoretical approaches and empirical landscapes with the aim to comprehend how Latin American publishers became the protagonists of a symbolic unification of their continent from the 1930s through the 1970s. The Latin American focus responds to a central point in its history: the effective interdependence of the national cultures of the continent. Americanism, until the 1950s, or Latin Americanism, from the onset of the Cold War, were moral frameworks that guided publishers’ thinking and actions and had concrete effects on the process of regional integration. The illustration of how Latin American publishing markets were articulated opens up broader and comparative questions regarding the ways in which the ideas embodied in books also sought to unify other cultural areas. The intersection of cultural, political and economic themes, as well as the style of writing, makes this book an interest to a wide reading public with historical and sociological sensitivity and global cultural curiosity.

The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of decolonization during this formative period. It demonstrates that the pioneers of decolonization were not twentieth-century Frenchmen or Algerians but nineteenth-century Peruvians and Colombians. In doing so, it vastly expands the horizons of decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.

The Invention of Humboldt is a game-changing volume of essays by leading scholars of the Hispanic world that explodes many myths about Alexander von Humboldt and his world.Rather than ‘follow in Humboldt’s footsteps,’ this book outlines the new critical horizon of post-Humboldtian Humboldt studies: the archaeology of all that lies buried under the Baron’s epistemological footprint. Contrary to the popular image of Humboldt as a solitary ‘adventurer’ and ‘hero of science’ surrounded by New World nature, The Invention of Humboldt demonstrates that the Baron’s opus and practice was largely derivative of the knowledge communities and archives of the Hispanic world. Although Humboldtian writing has invented a powerful cult that has served to erase the sources of his knowledge and practice, in truth Humboldt did not ‘invent nature,’ nor did he pioneer global science: he was the beneficiary of Iberian natural science and globalization. Nor was Humboldt a pioneering, ‘postcolonial’ cultural relativist. Instead, his anthropological views of the Americas were Orientalist and historicist and, in most ways, were less enlightened than those of his Creole contemporaries. This book will reshape the landscape of Humboldt scholarship. It is essential reading for all those interested in Alexander von Humboldt, the Hispanic American enlightenment, and the global history of science and knowledge.

The Invention of Humboldt is a game-changing volume of essays by leading scholars of the Hispanic world that explodes many myths about Alexander von Humboldt and his world.Rather than ‘follow in Humboldt’s footsteps,’ this book outlines the new critical horizon of post-Humboldtian Humboldt studies: the archaeology of all that lies buried under the Baron’s epistemological footprint. Contrary to the popular image of Humboldt as a solitary ‘adventurer’ and ‘hero of science’ surrounded by New World nature, The Invention of Humboldt demonstrates that the Baron’s opus and practice was largely derivative of the knowledge communities and archives of the Hispanic world. Although Humboldtian writing has invented a powerful cult that has served to erase the sources of his knowledge and practice, in truth Humboldt did not ‘invent nature,’ nor did he pioneer global science: he was the beneficiary of Iberian natural science and globalization. Nor was Humboldt a pioneering, ‘postcolonial’ cultural relativist. Instead, his anthropological views of the Americas were Orientalist and historicist and, in most ways, were less enlightened than those of his Creole contemporaries. This book will reshape the landscape of Humboldt scholarship. It is essential reading for all those interested in Alexander von Humboldt, the Hispanic American enlightenment, and the global history of science and knowledge.

This volume presents the first extensive census of the surviving copies of the treatise Historia Naturalis Brasiliae in libraries worldwide and examines the book from a variety of interdisciplinary viewpoints.The chapters in this volume are written by scholars from different fields of knowledge, including anthropology, botany, linguistics, literature, book history, medieval and early modern history, and art history. The chapters contextualize the treatise vis-à-vis its predecessors and contemporaneous works of natural history and examine its botanical, zoological, and linguistic accuracy and usefulness in the present day. Put together, the seven chapters of this volume present a kaleidoscope of possibilities of how to re-interpret Piso and Marcgraf’s work within the dynamic context of knowledge-production about the ‘New’ World in the early modern era, while also suggesting approaches to continue profiting from its subject matter in the present day.Toward an Intercultural Natural History of Brazil offers essential reading on the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, natural history and Latin American history. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.