Read more
The Invention of Humboldt is a game-changing volume of essays by leading scholars of the Hispanic world that explodes many myths about Alexander von Humboldt and his world.
List of contents
1. The Apotheosis of Humboldt during the Nineteenth Century
Leoncio López-Ocón
2. A Sense of Place: Early Modern Roots of Humboldt's Natural History Practices
Florike Egmond
3. Six Days on Tenerife: The Making of Humboldt's Tropical Antique
Peter Mason
4. Caldas and Humboldt in the Andes: Who Invented Biogeography?
Alberto Gómez Gutiérrez
5. An Archaeology of Mutis' Disappearing Gift to Humboldt
José Antonio Amaya
6. Incas, Pyramids, and Amazons: Notes on Humboldt's Equatorial Encounters
Neil Safier
7. Humboldt's Magic Mountain
Juan Pimentel
8. Peruvian
Desencuentro: Humboldt's Fog, Unanue's Light
Mark Thurner
9. Air in a Flask: The Mexican Making of Humboldt's Objects of Knowledge
Miruna Achim and Gabriela Goldin Marcovich
10. Humboldt's Misreading of the Mercantilist Face of New Spain
José Enrique Covarrubias
11. Bonpland's Cactus, Or Trafficking in Exotics and Ignorance
Irina Podgorny
12. Humboldt's Columbus, Or the Iberian Worlds that Humboldt Ignored
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
About the author
Mark Thurner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, History and Humanities at FLACSO-Ecuador, and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Florida. He was Professor of Latin American Studies at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, until the Institute's forced closure in 2021. He is the author of
History's Peru: The Poetics of Colonial and Postcolonial Historiography (2011) amongst numerous other publications. He is the editor of
The First Wave of Decolonization (Routledge, 2019).
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra is the Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History in the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of
Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (2006) amongst numerous other publications. He is editor of
Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830 (2018).
Summary
The Invention of Humboldt is a game-changing volume of essays by leading scholars of the Hispanic world that explodes many myths about Alexander von Humboldt and his world.
