BOOK: Mauricio NIETO OLARTE, Exploration, Religion and Empire in the Sixteenth-century Ibero-Atlantic World. A New Perspective on the History of Modern Science (Amsterdam: University Press, 2021). ISBN: 9789463725316, pp. 330 € 141,00

 

(Source: AUP)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Iberian conquest of the Atlantic at the beginning of the sixteenth century had a notable impact on the formation of the new world order in which Christian Europe claimed control over most a considerable part of the planet. This was possible thanks to the confluence of different and inseparable factors: the development of new technical capacities and favorable geographical conditions in which to navigate the great oceans; the Christian mandate to extend the faith; the need for new trade routes; and an imperial organization aspiring to global dominance. The author explores new methods for approaching old historiographical problems of the Renaissance—such as the discovery and conquest of America, the birth of modern science, and the problem of Eurocentrism—now in reference to actors and regions scarcely visible in the complex history of modern Europe: the ships, the wind, the navigators, their instruments, their gods, saints, and demons.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Mauricio Nieto Olarte is titular Professor at the Department of History and Geography as well as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

List of illustrations Acknowledgments

Introduction

The New World and the problem of Eurocentrism

Science and empire

Summary of the chapters in this book

1. The Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic

Portugal and Spain

Winds, currents, and sailing ships in the Atlantic

Gold, silver, slaves, souls, and a thousand kinds of trees

2. The imperial bureaucracy and the appropriation of the New World

Seville and the Casa de Contratacion

The universal monarchy

3. The piloto mayor: cosmography and the art of navigation

The post of piloto mayor: seamanship and cartography

The navigation manuals

Manuals for the Empire

Publications, dissemination, and secrecy

Humanism and the classics

Experience and authority

Man against the sea: shipwrecks and meteorology

Routes and chorographic descriptions: The New World within the new global order

4. Machines of the empire

The ships

Shipbuilding

War and artillery

Navigational instruments

The astrolabe

The cross-staff

The mariner’s compass

Time and clocks

The sounding/plumb line

The navigation charts

Astronomical tables

Instruments, measurements, precision, and standardization

The crew

The captain/admiral

The pilot

The shipmaster (maestre) and quartermaster (contramaestre)

The boatswain (guardian)

The ordinary seamen (marineros)

Midshipmen (grumetes) and cabin boys (pajes)

The carpenter, steward, cooper, and cook

The scribe, master-at-arms, and overseer

The cannoneer

The barber/surgeon

The priest

Life on board

The argot of the sailors

Overcrowding

Food and health

Men of the sea and men of God

5. The Master Map (Padrón Real) and the cartography of the New World

Nautical charts and how they were made

The making of a chart

The charts of tierra firme: the earliest maps of the New World

Three early maps of the New World

Juan de la Cosa (1500)

Waldseemuller (1507)

Diego Ribero (1520) 6. The creatures of God never seen before: natural history

Nature in the New World

The classics and the Bible

Monsters in paradise

To describe, classify, and name

Medicine, botany, and the knowledge of the natives

The Empire and natural history

7. The New World, global science, and Eurocentrism

Plus ultra

Experience and authority

The Empire and the challenge of standardization

Eurocentrism

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

More information with the publisher.

ARTICLE: "The Rhetoric and Reality of English Law in Colonial Maryland, Part 1 - 1632-1689", by Jeffrey K. Sawyer

Jeffrey K. Sawyer, University of Baltimore - School of Law, The Rhetoric and Reality of English Law in Colonial Maryland, Part 1 - 1632-1689, Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 4, Winter 2013, pp. 392-409

All information here

Abstract

The rule of English law in the English-speaking colonial world is at once obvious and puzzling. Along with language, the law anchored the Englishness of life in colonial America, At the same time, warring states and rival investors used law and diplomacy as weapons in their arsenals of global competition, and so the law of nations provided an unstable and frequently contested framework for exploration and settlement. The governance of struggling Atlantic settlements (especially before 1660) rose, fell, and was reconstructed with the various fortunes of each. In these early settlements there was much law-making, but law was perhaps negotiated as often as it was applied; local officials frequently adjusted English rules to local circumstances. The more historians investigate this world, the harder it is to be sure, exactly, how colonial law worked.

This article examines why a perennial contest over the precise authority of English law was so central to the rule of law in early Maryland. Two new perspectives will help further this inquiry, which has long interested colonial historians generally and historians of Maryland in particular. The first is a heightened appreciation of the fact that early American legal history unfolded in distinct phases. The second is a recognition that the contest over English law in the colonies developed along different but overlapping dimensions, a political or rhetorical dimension and an operational dimension. This latter world of law was the reality of lawsuits, debt collection, inheritance, criminal prosecutions, judgments, and so on.