Abstract: This talk explores the confluence, in the last two decades, between a new kind of imperial history that seeks to decenter and render more permeable the contours of individual empires in the early modern world and a similar phenomenon in the history of early modern science, where triumphalist narratives of individual geniuses have given way to a panorama of engagement with the natural world that includes a much more expansive range of actors. Arguing that this multi-polar and multi-actor scenario emerged organically from the concerns of Atlantic history, and also moved beyond them in important ways, the talk will highlight several recent examples from the Iberoamerican world, one of the proving grounds of this new approach merging the history of more permeable imperial and colonial spaces with a broader approach to science in what were formerly considered imperial peripheries.

Speaker: Neil Safier, Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian
PhD History, Johns Hopkins University 2004, The John Carter Brown Library

Talk: “Where Entangled Empires and Early Modern Science Intertwine: An Iberoamerican Perspective.”

Date: Wednesday, 29 March 2017, 6 p.m. in C/197