Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human
New Worlds, Maps and Monsters

Davies examines how Renaissance illustrated maps shaped ideas about peoples of the Americas, revealing relationships between civility, savagery and monstrosity.

Surekha Davies (Author)

9781108431828, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 August 2017

379 pages, 60 b/w illus.
25.5 x 18 x 2 cm, 0.73 kg

'Moreover, at a time of concerted interest in matters of humanism and post-humanism in early modern studies, and the emergence of the Anthropocene as a critical (in all senses of the word) category of analysis that challenges both epistemology and ontology, Davies' considerable achievement anticipates future projects that reconsider the processes of mapping and codifying natural phenomena 'within a longer chronology of attempts to come to terms with the concept of the human … and the implications of understanding 'human' as a fluid, subjective category that is inseparable from its environment'.' Gavin Hollis, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies

Giants, cannibals and other monsters were a regular feature of Renaissance illustrated maps, inhabiting the Americas alongside other indigenous peoples. In a new approach to views of distant peoples, Surekha Davies analyzes this archive alongside prints, costume books and geographical writing. Using sources from Iberia, France, the German lands, the Low Countries, Italy and England, Davies argues that mapmakers and viewers saw these maps as careful syntheses that enabled viewers to compare different peoples. In an age when scholars, missionaries, native peoples and colonial officials debated whether New World inhabitants could – or should – be converted or enslaved, maps were uniquely suited for assessing the impact of environment on bodies and temperaments. Through innovative interdisciplinary methods connecting the European Renaissance to the Atlantic world, Davies uses new sources and questions to explore science as a visual pursuit, revealing how debates about the relationship between humans and monstrous peoples challenged colonial expansion.

Introduction: Renaissance maps and the concept of the human
1. Climate, culture or kinship? Explaining human diversity c.1500
2. Atlantic empires, map workshops and Renaissance geographical culture
3. Spit-roasts, barbecues and the invention of the Brazilian cannibal
4. Trade, empires and propaganda: Brazilians on French maps in the age of François I and Henri II
5. Monstrous ontology and environmental thinking: Patagonia's giants
6. The epistemology of wonder: Amazons, headless men and mapping Guiana
7. Civility, idolatry and cities in Mexico and Peru
8. New sources, new genres and America's place in the world, 1590–1645
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK], European history [HBJD]