Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-495rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-17T02:13:01.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Michael T. Ryan
Affiliation:
University of Chicaog

Extract

In Carlos Fuentes's recent novel, Terra Nostra, El Señor, an autistic Spanish king who bears a conspicuous resemblance to Philip II, is told of the existence of new worlds across the seas. In outrage and disbelief, he denies that such a thing was possible, for he, El Señor, had decreed that the only world which existed was to be found within the walls of his newly constructed palace. Royal monk that he was, he had ordered the world built for him and so forbade the existence of other worlds.

Type
Western Understanding of Other Cultures
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Columbus, too, took the natives for granted, thinking that they would be converted to Christianity quickly and easily: Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus, Jane, Cecil, ed. (London, 1930), I, 410.Google Scholar Pigafetta's narrative has been published as Magellan's Voyage around the World: The Original Text of the Ambrosian MS, Robinson, James A., ed. (Cleveland, 1906).Google Scholar

2 Febvre, Lucien, Le problème de l'incroyance au XVIe siècle (1942; Paris, 1968), 386;Google ScholarScammell, G. V., “The New Worlds and Europe in the Sixteenth Century,” The Historical Journal, 12:3 (1969), 389412;CrossRefGoogle ScholarElliott, J. H., The Old World and the New (Cambridge, 1970);Google Scholaridem, “Renaissance Europe and America: A Blunted Impact?” in First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Chiappelli, Fredi, ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), I, 1123.Google Scholar Donald Lach's impressive work on Asia tends in the same direction: The revelation of Asia to preindustrial Europe did not transform or quickly modify the basic tenets of Western life, faith, or institutions.” The Century of Discovery, Vol. IGoogle Scholar (in two books) of Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago, 1965), xii.Google Scholar Henri-Jean Martin's study of the Parisian book trade in the seventeenth century casts some new light on the position of “livres geographiques” relative to other categories of book production: Livre, pouvoirs, et société à Paris au XVIIe siecle (1598–1701) (Paris, 1969), I, 7396, 206–12; II, 850–55.Google Scholar See here also Lach, , The Literary Arts, Vol. II,Google Scholar Bk 2 of Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago, 1977), 3979.Google Scholar

3 Among others, Baron, Hans, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1966), 4778,Google Scholar especially; Kelley, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York, 1970);Google Scholar and Hay, Denys, Annalists and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1977), 87132.Google Scholar Howland Rowe offers a similar perspective in his “The Renaissance Foundations of Anthropology,” in Readings in the History of Anthropology, Darnell, Regna, ed. (New York, 1974), 6177.Google Scholar

4 Landucci, Sergio, I filosofi e i selvaggi (Bari, 1972), ch. 1.Google ScholarLovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, 1936)Google Scholar remains the classic study of the idea of plenitude in Western history. Bulwer's, JohnAnthropometamorphosis: Man Transform'd; or. The Artificiall Changling (London, 1653), sigs. Cr-v, summarizes the traditional Christian interpretation of variety as an effect of sin.Google Scholar

5 My reading of the sceptical tradition owes more to Popkin, Richard, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (New York, 1964),Google Scholar than it does to René Pintard's important Le libertinage erudit dans la première moitie du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1943).Google Scholar Cf. Lach, , The Scholarly Disciplines, Vol. II,Google Scholar Bk 3 of Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago, 1977), 565–66:Google Scholar “The most fundamental and universal of the changes effected in Europe's view of itself and the world was to be found in the growth of a new form of cultural relativism… The century that had begun with a robust confidence in European secular ideals, ideas, institutions, and arts ended in a wondering doubt about their superiority and permanence.”

6 This seems to be one conclusion that might be drawn from part of Elizabeth L. Eisenstein's ambitious study of the impact of printing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, 1977), I, 163302.Google Scholar

7 Elliott, The Old World and the New; idem, “Renaissance Europe”; Landucci, I filosofi. Lach, Century of Discovery; idem, A Century of Wonder, Vol. IIGoogle Scholar (in three books) of Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago, 19701977).Google ScholarHodgen, Margaret T., Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964).CrossRefGoogle ScholarHonour, Hugh, The New Golden Land: European Images of America (New York, 1976).Google ScholarBitterli, Urs, Die “Wilden” unddie “Zivilisierten” (Munich, 1976).Google Scholar Although it is overstated and filled with its share of Parisian mumbo jumbo, Michel de Certeau's essay, “Ethno-graphie. L'oralité, ou l'espace de l'autre: Léry,” in his L'écriture de l'histoire (Paris, 1975), 215–48, is worth consulting as an approach to travel literature in general.Google Scholar

8 Among others, see Gusdorf, Georges, La révolution galiléenne, Vol. IIIGoogle Scholar of Les sciences humaines et la pensée occidentale (Paris, 1969), tome 2, pp. 178201;Google ScholarDuchet, Michèle, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières (Paris, 1971), 25136;Google ScholarMoravia, Sergio, La scienza dell'uomo net settecento (Bari, 1970);Google ScholarMühlmann, Wilhelm E., Geschichte der Anthropologie (Frankfurt, 1968), 35ff.Google ScholarBoon, James A., “Comparative De-enlightenment: Paradox and Limits in the History of Ethnology,” Daedalus, 109:2 (1980), 7391, has recently proposed a reevaluation of travel literature based on its naïve receptivity to human difference and variety. It remains moot whether the sources will support Boon's interpretation.Google Scholar

9 Roy, Louis Le, Of the Interchangeable Course, or Variety of Things in the Whole World (London, 1594), 127v.Google Scholar

10 Marin Mersenne to André Rivet of 12 March 1644, cited in Lenoble, Robert, Mersenne ou la naissance du mécanisme (1942; Paris, 1971), 342.Google Scholar

11 Kepler, Johannes, De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii, et qui sub ejus exortum de novo imi it, trigono igneo (1606) in Gesammelte Werke, Caspar, Max, ed. (Munich, 1938), I, 335ff.Google Scholar

12 Buonanni, Filippo, Musaeum Kircherianum (Rome, 1709).Google Scholar

13 Among others, see McGuire, J. E. and Rattansi, P. M., “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan,’Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21:2 (1966), 108–43;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWebster, Charles, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660 (London, 1975);Google ScholarRossi, Paolo, Aspetti della rivoluzione scientifica (Naples, 1971);Google Scholaridem, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, Rabinovitch, Sacha, trans. (Chicago, 1968);Google ScholarMeyer, R. W., Leibnitz and the Seventeenth Century Revolution (1948; Cambridge, 1952).Google Scholar

14 Jones, W. R., “The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13:4 (1971), 388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One of the original meanings of paganus denoted one who lived in the countryside (pagus), a rustic. The earliest Christian use of it to refer to nonbelievers does not occur until after Constantine, though the precise sense in which the word was used has long been a matter of dispute (see Pauly-Wissowa, , Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1943), vol. 36, pt. 1, cols. 2295–97). Travellers and antiquarians also used Biblical terms interchangeably to refer to exotic pagans: ethnici, gentiles, etc.Google Scholar

15 Bataillon, Marcel, “L'unité du genre humain du P. Acosta au P. Clavigero,” in Mélanges à la mémoire de Jean Sarrailh (Paris, 1966), I, 7595;Google ScholarManuel, Frank E., “Pansophia, a Seven teenth Century Dream of Science,” in his Freedom from History (New York, 1971), 89113.Google Scholar Tommaso Campanella's missionary program is set forth in his Quod reminiscenlur, Amerio, Romano, ed. (Padua, 1939).Google Scholar Comenius's elephantine De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica (1660; Prague, 1966)Google Scholar is his most comprehensive statement of his plans for converting and reforming the entire world. Leibniz's propaganda fidei per scientiam exists in scattered places throughout his large corpus; see Baruzi, Jean, Leibniz et l'organisation religieuse de la terre (Paris, 1907), for an introduction.Google Scholar

16 On the general confrontation between pagan and Christian in the seventeenth century, see Delumeau, Jean, Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1971),Google Scholar and his Leçon inaugurate au Collège de France. Chaire d'Histoire des mentalités religieuses dans l'Occident moderne (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

17 Renaissance studies of paganism are reviewed in Henri Pinard de Boullaye, L'étude comparée des religions (Paris, 19221925), I, chs. 4–5,Google Scholar and in Allen, Don Cameron, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore and London, 1970), 2182.Google Scholar

18 Martyr, Peter, De novo orbe, or the Historie of the West Indies, Eden, Richard and Lok, Michael, trans. (London, 1612), 53:Google Scholar “Now (most noble Prince) what neede you hereafter to marveyle of the spirite of Apollo so shaking his Sibylles with extreme furie: you hadde thought that the superstitions of antiquity hadde perished.” de Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández, Historia general y natural de las lndias, de Tudela, Juan Perez, ed. (Madrid, 1959), I, bk. VI, ch. ix.Google Scholar

19 de las Casas, Bartolomé, Historia de las lndias (Mexico City, 1951), I, 17.Google Scholar

20 de Acosta, José, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Grimstone, Edward, trans. (London, 1880), II, 388.Google Scholar

21 See Seznec, Jean, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, Sessions, Barbara F., trans. (New York, 1953), esp. 219–56,Google Scholar and his Un essai de mythologie comparée au début du XVIIIe siècle,” Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire, 48:fasc. 5 (1931), 268–81.Google Scholar

22 de Torquemada, Juan, Primera, (segunda, tercera,) pane de los veinte i un libros rituales i monarchia Indiana (Madrid, 1723), II, 32ff.Google Scholar

23 Sahagún, Bernardino, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana (Mexico City, 1938), I, 1516ff.Google Scholar

24 Herbert of Cherbury, The Antienl Religion of the Gentiles and the Causes of their Errors Consider'd (London, 1705), 33,Google Scholar for example. See Vossius, Gerard, De theologia gentili et physiologia Christiana (Amsterdam, 1668), 10, col. 1; 2122;Google Scholar 27, col. 2, for other examples.

25 de Mornay, Philippe, De la verité de la Religion Chrestienne (Paris, 1581);Google ScholarGrotius, Hugo, De veritate religionis Christianae, 3d. ed. (Paris, 1633);Google ScholarHoornbeek, Johannes, De conversione lndorum et Gentilium (Amsterdam, 1669);Google ScholarTosi, Clemente, L'India orientale, descrittione geografica & historica (Rome, 1676).Google Scholar

26 de Acosta, José, De procuranda indorum salute, Mateos, Francisco, trans. (Madrid, 1952), I, bk. I, ch. iv; bk. II, ch. viii.Google ScholarPossevino, Antonio, Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum (Venice, 1603), 447ff.Google Scholar

27 de las Casas, Bartolomé, Del unico modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera religion, Carlo, Augustin Millares and Hanke, Lewis, trans. (Mexico City, 1942), 6.Google Scholar

28 Elliott, , The Old World and the New, 1516;Google ScholarHodgen, , Early Anthropology, 338–39:Google Scholar “In all of these early examples of the identification of the culture of contemporary savagery with the cultures of the antique world there is the same blind spot, the same perversity of judgment, the same lack of elementary historical insight. In all, correspondences are elicited between an existing condition among a history-less people, a savage or barbarian group, and a purportedly unchanging trait or institution among an ancient historical people…. Forgotten was the fact that the social institutions of these ancient high cultures were products of long histories and a succession of changes.” However, Michel de Certeau has recently proposed an interesting if dense interpretation of the function of these comparisons in “Writing vs. Time: History and Anthropology in the Works of Lafitau,” Yale French Studies, no. 59 (1980), 3764.Google Scholar

29 For example, Purchas, Samuel, Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625), I, 400.Google ScholarRogerius, Abraham, La porte ouverte, pour parvenir à la connoissance du Paganisme caché, Grue, Thomas La, trans. (Amsterdam, 1670).Google Scholarde Montaigne, Michel, “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, Frame, Donald M., trans. (Stanford, 1958), 431–32.Google Scholar

30 As one example among many, see LeJeune, Paul, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France en l'année 1634 (Paris, 1635), 4853; 7178.Google Scholar

31 Thevet, André, Les singularitez de la France Antarctique (Paris, 1558),Google Scholar ch. 36. de Lery, Jean, Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil (La Rochelle, 1578), 266:Google Scholar “…les Ameriqains [sic] sonts extremement voire visiblement & actuellement tormentez des malins esprits, que parce que chacun peut juger que les affections quelques violentes qu'elles puissent estre ne pourroyent affliges les hommes de telle facon qu'il sera aisé de les rembarrer par ce moyen.”

32 Valle, Pietro della, The Travels of Sig. Pietro della Valle, a Noble Roman, into East-India and Arabia Deserta, Havers, G., trans. (London, 1665), 5556.Google ScholarFryer, John, A New Account of East-India and Persia in Eight Letters (London, 1698), 4344; 102–3; 179–81.Google Scholar

33 Acosta, , Natural and Moral History, II, 306.Google Scholar

34 Furet, François, “L'histoire et ‘l'homme sauvage,’“ in Historien entre l'ethnologie et le futurologie (Paris, 1971), 231–37.Google Scholar

35 Kircher, Athanasius, China monumentis (Amsterdam, 1667), 129–63;Google ScholarHuet, Pierre Daniel, Demonstralio evangelica, 3d ed. (Paris, 1690), 47182;Google ScholarDuran, Diego, Historia de las lndias de Nueva Espana, Garibay, Angel, ed. (Mexico City, 1967), II, 13ff.Google Scholar

36 Giuliano Gliozzi's monumental polemic, Adamo e il nuovo mondo: la nascita dell'antropologia come ideologia coloniale (Florence, 1977),Google Scholar has replaced Lee Huddleston, E., Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts, 1492–1729 (Austin, Texas, 1967),Google Scholar and Allen, Don Cameron, The Legend of Noah (Urbana, Illinois, 1949), 113137, as the standard account of the debate.Google Scholar

37 On Annius and his forgeries, see Gruppe, Otto, Geschichte der klassischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte während des Mittelalters im Abendland und während der Neuzeit (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 2930,Google Scholar and Allen, , Mysteriously Meant, 61ff.Google Scholar

38 du Bellay, Guillaume, Epitome de l'antiquité des Gaules et de France (Paris, 1556);Google ScholarBecanus, Joannes Goropius, Origines Antwerpianae (Antwerp, 1569);Google ScholarBale, John, Scriptorum illustrium Brytannie quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam vocant (Basel, 1557).Google Scholar

39 Webb, John, An Historical Essay endeavoring a Probability that the Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language (London, 1669), 27ff.;Google ScholarKircher, , China monumentis, 129–63.Google Scholar

40 Lafitau, Joseph François, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains comparees aux moeurs des premiers temps (Paris, 1724), I, 32ff.Google Scholar

41 Steuco, Agostino, De perenni philosophia libri X (Leyden, 1540).Google Scholar See also Schmitt, Charles B., “Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 27:4 (1966), 505–32;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, “‘Prisca theologia e philosophia perennis’: due temi del Rinascimento italiano e la loro fortuna,” in Il pensiero italiano del Rinascimento e il tempo nostra (Florence, 1970), 211–36;Google Scholar and Walker, D. P., The Ancient Theology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972).Google Scholar

42 Acosta, , Natural and Moral History, II, 303;Google Scholarde la Vega, >Garcilaso, Inca, El, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, Livermore, Harold, trans. (Austin, Texas, 1966), I, 40ff.;Google Scholar Rogerius, La porte ouverte. On the Jesuits in China, see especially Walker, , The Ancient Theology, 194230;Google ScholarRowbotham, Arnold H., “The Jesuit Figurists and Eighteenth Century Religious Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 17:4 (1956), 471–85;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPinot, Virgile, La Chine et la formation de l'esprit philosophique en France (Paris, 1932);Google Scholar and Kley, Edwin J. Van, “Europe's ‘Discovery’ of China and the Writing of World History,” American Historical Review, 76:2 (1971), 358–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Temple, William, “An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning” (1690) in Five Miscellaneous Essays, Monk, Samuel H., ed. (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1963), 38ff.Google Scholar

44 See especially Philippe Couplet's introduction to his and his fellow Jesuits' translation of part of the Confucian corpus, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Paris, 1687).Google Scholar

45 Schiller, Friedrich von, “The Nature and Value of Universal History,” History and Theory, 11:3 (1972), 321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Montanus, Arnoldus, Atlas Japannensis, Ogilby, John, trans. (London, 1670);Google Scholaridem.Atlas Chinensis, Ogilby, John, trans. (London, 1671).Google ScholarNieuhoff, Johan, L'ambassade de la Compagnie Orientate des Provinces Unies vers l'Empereur de la Chine, Carpentier, Jean Le, trans. (Leyden, 1665), conveys a similar impression.Google Scholar

47 Landucci, , I filosofi, chs. 2–3, constitutes an excellent introduction to these problems.Google Scholar

48 Brerewood, Edward, Enquiries Touching the Diversity of Languages and Religions Throughout the chiefe parts of the World (London, 1614), 118.Google Scholar Heinrich Scherer's maps in his Atlas novus exhibens orbem terraqueum per natura opera (Frankfort, 1710) are also good sources for this religious geography.Google Scholar