Imperial Unknowns
The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650–1750

This book offers a new approach to understanding the history of ignorance across politics, religion, history and science during the early Enlightenment.

Cornel Zwierlein (Author)

9781107166448, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 October 2016

412 pages, 6 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16 x 2.4 cm, 0.79 kg

'This study demonstrates in an impressive way and with a stupendous [or amazing] erudition [or scholarship] that the question for forms of ignorance and how men and women of the past were coping with the borders of their knowledge can lead to new research questions.' Mark Häberlein, translated from Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung

In this major study, the history of the French and British trading empires in the early modern Mediterranean is used as a setting to test a new approach to the history of ignorance: how can we understand the very act of ignoring - in political, economic, religious, cultural and scientific communication - as a fundamental trigger that sets knowledge in motion? Zwierlein explores whether the Scientific Revolution between 1650 and 1750 can be understood as just one of what were in fact many simultaneous epistemic movements and considers the role of the European empires in this phenomenon. Deconstructing central categories like the mercantilist 'national', the exchange of 'confessions' between Western and Eastern Christians and the bridging of cultural gaps between European and Ottoman subjects, Zwierlein argues that understanding what was not known by historical agents can be just as important as the history of knowledge itself.

Introduction
1. Politics and economy: nationalizing economics
2. Religion: empires ignoring, learning, forgetting religions
3. History: how to cope with unconscious ignorance
4. Science: Mediterranean empires and scientific unknowns
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], History of ideas [JFCX]