Connecting Territories

Front matter

EMERGENCE OF NATURAL HISTORY 5

CONNECTING

BRILL

PART 1 Naturalists' Methods

2 Between the Americas and Europe: Mapping Territories through Questionnaires, 16th-18th Centuries 23 Simona Boscani Leoni

3 (Re-)Shaping a Method: Field Research and Experimental Legacy in Vallisneri's Primi Itineris Specimen (1705) 54 Francesco Luzzini

4 Flora Near and Far: Accumulating Knowledge on Plants in Eighteenth-Century Zurich 75 Meike Knittel

5 The Secrets of Indians: Native Knowers in Enlightenment Natural Histories of the Southern Americas 101 Stefanie Gánger

PART 2 Authorities' and Societies' Strategies

6 Change and Continuity: The Bureaucracy of Knowledge in South America 127 Irina Podgorny

7 Questionnaires, Parish Registers and Prize Competitions: The Zurich Physical Society's Sources and Methods for Surveying the Territory Sarah Baumgartner

VI

CONTENTS Social Anthropology avant la lettre: The Economic Enlightenment

Perspective on Traditional Uses of Wetlands 170 Martin Stuber

PART 3 Defining Territories

Divergent Perception: Deserts and Mountains in Transition to Modernity, Seen through Alexander von Humboldt's Views of Nature 189

Jon Mathieu

Alpine Landscapes of Health: The Swiss Whey Cure and Therapeutic Tourism between 1750 and 1870 210 Barbara Orland

Creation of “Scientific” Knowledge: The Asiatick Society and Exploration of the Himalaya, 1784-1850 242 Chetan Singh

Figures and Tables

2.1

Figures

Seal of the Physical Society Zurich (Physikalische Gesellschaft Zürich or Naturforschende Gesellschaft Zúrich) 2

Frontispiece of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis omnium Terrae Regionum inservientium |...], Tiguri: typis Henrici Bodmeri, 1716 9

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Einladungs-Brief zu Erforschung natürlicher Wunderen, so sich im Schweizer-Land befinden, Zurich: [D. Gessner], 1699 39 The draft copy of the Primi Itineris Specimen 57

Northern Italy, the Duchy of Modena and Reggio, and Vallisneri's journey. Original map: L'Italie: publiée sous les auspices de Monseigneur le Duc d’Orleans, 1743 58

Primi Itineris Specimen, the map of Garfagnana by Domenico Cecchi 70 Tab. x111 of Gessner's Tabulae phytographicae depicting representatives of the fifth Linnaean class 77

Tab. LIV of Gessner's Tabulae phytographicae showing passion flowers 85 Paperwork accompanying the shipment to Spain of the skeleton of the mighty animal, as printed in Trelles, El padre Torres 136

Copy made by Muñoz of the sketch of the skeleton kept in the archives of Buenos Aires 137

The colonial sketch as published in El Museo Americano 142

River Mouth of the Aare, near Interlaken, 1812 175

Plan of the Belp Bog (Grundriss des Belp-Mooses), 1709 177

General Map of the Jura Water Bodies (General Charte der Jura Gewásser), 1816/17 180

Tables

First-hand German editions of Views of Nature: bibliographical

indications 192

Translations of Views of Nature from the German editions until Humboldt's death 1859 195

Notes on Contributors

Sarah Baumgartner has recently completed a PhD at the University of Bern. She holds an MA in History and a BSc in Geography of the same University and now works as a freelance historian and archivist. Her research interests include the history of scientific societies in the 18th century and early modern agriculture.

Simona Boscani Leoni

is a Swiss National Science Foundation-Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Bern and senior researcher at the EPFL, Lausanne. She earned a PhD in History from the EHESS in Paris. Her main research interests are medieval social history, iconography, early modern history of knowledge and environmental history. Her current research project focuses on the main actors, networks and places of scientific communication from the 17th century to around 1830. Most recently, she published an annotated edition of the correspondence of the Swiss physician and naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer: "Unglaubliche Bergwunder” Johann Jakob Scheuchzer und Graubünden. Ausgewühlte Briefe, 1699-1707 (2019); an extended edition of this correspondence online on: https://hallerNet.org.

Stefanie Gánger

is Professor of Modern History at the University of Heidelberg. She holds an MPhil and a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and completed her BA in History at the universities of Augsburg and Seville. Her work considers the histories of science and medicine in late-colonial and early Republican Spanish America, as well as the wider world. Her books and articles examine a variety of themes, ranging from the history of antiquarianism and collecting to that of vernacular medicine and plant trade.

Meike Knittel

is a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and an associated researcher at the University of Bern's Historical Institute, where she completed her PhD in 2018. She holds an MA in History from the University of Konstanz and has worked as a curator for an exhibition on the medieval coral trade. Her research interests include the history of collections and the history of knowledge with a focus on natural history museums and 18th-century botany.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS IX

Francesco Luzzini

(PhD, History of Science; Bs/Ms, Natural Sciences) is Affiliate Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Contributing Editor for the Isis Bibliography of the History of Science. His work focuses mainly on the earth and environmental sciences, natural philosophy, and medicine in early modern Europe. His new project Sounding the Depths of Providence focuses on the early modern debate on ore generation and on its influence on the human-environment system: in the upcoming years, this research will be carried out under an EU-sponsored Marie Sklodowska- Curie Global Fellowship (Ca' Foscari University Venice-Johns Hopkins University).

Jon Mathieu is editor-in-chief of the journal Histories and professor emeritus of history at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. He has widely published on the history of mountain regions. Currently he is working on a Brief Global History of Sacred Mountains since 1500.

Barbara Orland

is a senior lecturer (Privatdozentin) of history of science, technology, and medicine at the pharmacy museum of the University of Basel. The main field of her research and teaching lies in the history of the life sciences and biomedicine from the 17th to the 20th century. In 201 she replaced the professor for history of science at the University of Konstanz. In 2007/2008 she has been awarded the Káthe-Leichter guest professorship at the University of Vienna. Her current research interests cover different fields of the history of life sciences and biomedicine, e.g. history of pharmaceutical materiality; scientific concepts of fertilization and pregnancy, nutrition and metabolism, biomaterials (like blood and milk).

Irina Podgorny

is a permanent research fellow at the Argentine National Council of Science (CONICET). She studied Archaeology at La Plata University, obtaining her PhD in 1994 with a dissertation on the history of archaeology and museums. She has been a research fellow at the mpıw in Berlin and the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut Berlin as well at MAsT (Museu de Astronomia) in Rio de Janeiro. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of Science in Context since 2003 and History of Humanities since 2017 and has recently been elected to the Council of Hss (History of Science Society). Her current work includes the history of paleontology, museums of natural history and archaeological ruins.

X NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Chetan Singh

former Professor of History at Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla (India), specialised in medieval north Indian history at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has also been researching and writing on environmental change, history and culture of the western Himalaya for more than two decades. He was Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, from 2013 to 2016. His publications include Himalayan Histories: Economy, Polity and Religious Tradition (2018), Natural Premises: Ecology and Peasant Life in the Western Himalaya, 1800-1950 (1998), and Region and Empire: Panjab in the Seventeenth Century (1991).

Martin Stuber is senior researcher at the Historical Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland. He published widely on the history of natural resources (forest, cultivated plants, wetlands, sustainability) and on the history of knowledge in the 18th century (Albrecht von Haller, Scientific Networks, Economic Enlightenment).

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: From Switzerland to the Indies Simona Boscani Leoni, Sarah Baumgartner and Meike Knittel

In Zurich, in the early 18th century, the physician and naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733) published a bibliography of all books on natural history that he knew about. His catalogue contained publications on Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Scheuchzer's idea was to bring together the different local natural histories into a natural history of the world. His own contribution to this “global natural history" was his research on the Alps and its fauna, flora, minerals and about “homo alpinus helveticus” (“Swiss Alpine Man").

Half a century later, the Physical Society of Zurich, a patriotic society interested in natural sciences and agronomy, inspired by similar projects undertaken by other economic societies, conducted surveys of the city's subject territory.? Likewise, animated by reports on travels to hitherto unknown regions and news about the exploration of faraway territories, diverse actors — both academically and non-academically educated — all over Europe became increasingly interested in their surroundings. Drawing on travelogues and questionnaires of local and colonial actors as well as on their own observations, early modern natural historians collected information about both nature and people inhabiting these territories, which helped to turn them into distinct spaces.3

1 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis omnium Terrae Regionum inservientium; historiae naturalis Helvetiae Prodromus; accessit Celeberrimi Viri Jacobi Le Long, Bibliothecarii Oratoriani de Scriptoribus historiae naturalis Galliae; collegit Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Med. D. Math. Prof. Societ. Leopoldino-Carolinae, Regiae Angl. & Boruss. (Tiguri: Typis Henrici Bodmeri, 1716). About Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, see: Simona Boscani Leoni, ed., Wissenschaft - Berge - Ideologien: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733) und die ‚frühneuzeitliche Naturforschung — Scienza - montagna - ideologie. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733) e la ricerca naturalistica in epoca moderna (Basel: Schwabe, 2010); Urs B. Leu, ed., Natura Sacra: Der Frühaufklärer Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672-1733) (Zug: Achius Verlag, 2012); Michael Kempe, Wissenschaft, Theologie, Aufklárung: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672— 1733) und die Sintfluttheorie (Epfendorf: bibliotheca academica Verlag, 2003).

2 Sarah Baumgartner, "Das nützliche Wissen. Akteure, Tátigkeiten, Kommunikationspraxis und Themen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich, 1746 bis ca. 1830” (PhD diss., Universitity of Bern, 2019); Rolf Graber, Bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit und spätabsolutistischer Staat: Sozietätenbewegung und Konfliktkonjunktur in Zürich 1746-1780 (Zurich: Chronos, 1993).

3 On travels, queries and instructions for travellers: Maurizio Bossi and Claudio Greppi, eds., Viaggi e scienza: le istruzioni scientifiche per i viaggiatori nei secoli XVII-XIX, Gabinetto scientifico letterario G. P. Vieusseux, Studi 13 (Florence: Olschki, 2005); Lorelai Kury, *Les

© SIMONA BOSCANI LEONI ET AL., 2022 | DO1I:10.1163/9789004412477 002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

FIGURE 1.1

Seal of the Physical Society Zurich (Physikalische Gesellschaft Zürich or Naturforschende Gesellschaft Zürich)

SOURCE: FERDINAND RUDIO, FESTSCHRIFT DER NATURFORSCHENDEN GESELLSCHAFT IN ZÜRICH, 1746-1896, ZURICH, IN KOMMISSION BEI FÁSI & BEER, 1896, 213

Since the early days of European presence in the Americas, information reaching Europe contributed to a critical re-reading of Aristotle and other classical texts: Renaissance scholars shared the view that the natural world was still largely unknown and that many secrets were waiting to be investigated.^ Curiosity revived, not only for antiquities, but for "exotic" and local nature, especially for “exotic” and local flora and fauna, and for minerals, more particularly for local characteristics of the terrain, orology and hydrology. Civil and natural history, geography and antiquarianism are very long-standing “travelling companions" in the early modern age.

instructions de voyage dans les expéditions scientifiques françaises (1750-1830), Revue d'histoire des sciences 51, no. 1 (1998); Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel 1550-1800 (Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995); Daniel Carey, "Inquiries, Heads, and Directions: Orienting Early Modern Travel," in Travel Narratives, the New Science and Literary Discourse: 1569-1750, ed. Judy A. Hayden (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); Lorelai Kury, Histoire naturelle et voyages scientifiques (1780-1830) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001); Joan-Pau Rubiés, "Instructions for Travellers: Teaching the Eye to See," History and Anthropology 9, no. 2-3 (1996); Alix Cooper, “Fragen ohne Antworten: Die Suche nach lokalen Informationen in der frühen Aufklärung,’ in Vor Google: Eine Mediengeschichte der Suchmaschine im analogen Zeitalter, ed. Thomas Brandstetter (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012).

4 Onthe complexity of natural history during the Renaissance, the "discovery" of the Americas and the development of a colonial botany, see: Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006); Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Samir Boumediene, La colonisation du savoir: une histoire des plantes médicinales du “Nouveau Monde" (1492-1750) (Vaulx-en-Velin: Les éditions des mondes à faire, 2016); Norbert Ortmayr, "Kulturpflanzentransfers 1492-1900, Historische Sozialkunde: Geschichte, Fachdidaktik, politische Bildung 1 (2002); Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan and Anatole Tchikine, eds., The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016).

The final decades of the 18th century became a crucial period for the different fields of natural history and related disciplines of ethnology and archaeology, as academic subjects in light of the advancement of Linnaean systematic classification in botany and zoology.* The perception and systematization of the natural world went through a paradigmatic shift as a result. Collections and the practice of collecting itself played a major role in this process and influenced the global exchange of ideas, knowledge, specimens, and personnel. Material as well as intellectual exchange took place in diverse settings, including collections, media, lecture halls, and the natural world itself.

This publication brings together several researchers from around the globe, who have analysed the exploration of the different "local natures" (natural history) and the discovery of "local inhabitants and their history" (ethnography and antiquarianism) from a comparative perspective in the long 18th century.® The focus on this period, a time when scientific travels and expeditions around the world increased, is especially fruitful inasmuch as it re-visits debates on the periodization of this “discovery of the indigenous"? The articles collected here cast a transnational look at European science, at home and abroad, as well as at scientific practice globally, and at the involvement of a great variety of local actors, for example academies and learned societies. This comparative and longue durée approach is supported by the ability to transcend individual disciplines and to combine the histories of natural history, medicine, environmental history, ethnology and archaeology as well as their interconnections. Finally, the book questions the different contexts of knowledge creation, be they political (republics, monarchies, colonial rule, etc.), material or linguistic. Based on the findings of historians, with particular emphasis on the social and cultural practices of early-modern natural history, the book focuses especially on collecting and exchanging, measuring and classifying information on territories of different scope.

5 Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

6 The book was inspired by discussions and reflections developed during an international conference organized at the University of Bern by the editors of the volume in collaboration with the Lichtenberg-Kolleg of the Georg-August-University, Góttingen (Dominik Hünniger) under the title of “Mapping the Territory: Exploring People and Nature, 1700 until 1830" (21-23 September 2017). The conference was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Project no. 174561), the University of Bern, the Centre for Global Studies of the University of Bern, the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Burgergemeinde Bern, and the Swiss Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The editors thank all speakers for their active participation in the success of the conference.

7 Alix Cooper Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Four main questions inspired this publication.® The first one concerns the actors of natural history. Over the last decades, the attention of historians has shifted from individual figures, more exactly learned men with an academic training, like physicians and professors, to the diverse actors doing natural history, i.e. amateurs (or grassroots), practitioners, family members, and women.? Through the proliferation of communication channels in the early modern age, university-trained scholars were able to establish contact with people of different social backgrounds, with or without academic training, with merchants, diplomats, (court and colonial) officials, clergymen (pastors of the Protestant and Reformed Church, priests or Jesuits) as well as with artisans, apothecaries, gardeners, hunters, and peasants.!° Not only were the networks socially diverse, but they also ranged from local to global networks of research in people, fauna and flora."

8 The book is linked to a Swiss National Science Foundation-sponsored Professorship project led by Simona Boscani Leoni (Project no.: 144731), which ran from 2013 (October) to 2017 (September) under the title: “Cultures of Natural History: Main Actors, Networks and Places of Scientific Communication in the Early-Modern Period”. Sarah Baumgartner and Meike Knittel participated in the project as scientific collaborators and wrote their PhD dissertations during the period. Baumgartner, “Das niitzliche Wissen”; Meike Knittel, "Netzwerke der Botanik. Johannes Gessner (1709-1790) und die botanische Forschung im 18. Jahrhundert" (PhD diss., University of Bern, 2018). An extension of the project under the title: "Cultures of natural history online. Main actors, networks, topics in the longue durée (1550 to around 1830)" is still continuing at the University of Bern (Project no.:176978).

9 A pioneer work on women in the sciences was: Londa Schiebinger, The Mind has no Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

10 A About these (in)visible assistants/helpers: Steven Shapin, “The Invisible Technician,” AmericanScientist77,no.6 (1989); IwanR. Morus, "Invisible Technicians, Instrument-Makers and Artisans,' in A Companion to the History of Science, ed. Bernard V. Lightman (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2016); Dunja Bulinsky, Nahbeziehungen eines europäischen Gelehrten: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672—1733) und sein soziales Umfeld (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2020); Sophie Ruppel, Botanophilie: Mensch und Pflanze in der aufklärerisch-bürgerlichen Gesellschaft um 1800 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2019); Monika Mommertz, "Heroization in Science, Scholarship, and Knowledge-Production: The Intellectual Hero in Transdisciplinary and Trans-Epochal Perspective,” Helden. Heroes. Héros. Special Issue 4 (2018); Simona Boscani Leoni, ed., "Unglaubliche Bergwunder”: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer und Graubünden. Ausgewählte Briefe 1699-1707 (Chur: Verlag Bündner Monatsblatt, 2019); Valentina Pugliano, “Natural History in the Apothecary’s Shop,” in Worlds of Natural History, ed. Helen A. Curry, Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and Emma C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) and the special issue of Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 44, no. 2 (2021): Working at the Margins: Labor and the Politics of Participation in Natural History, 1700-1830, ed. Patrick Anthony.

11 For this communicative network of naturalists/botanists, see for example: Bettina Dietz, Das System der Natur: Die kollaborative Wissenskultur der Botanik im 18. Jahrhundert

The second question focuses on the role of communication networks and their spread across local, transregional and global levels, beyond confessional and class differences. Thirdly, we wanted to examine the research practices of the different actors involved in "natural knowledge production" and their fieldworks. Finally, our fourth prompt was the definition of the different lieux de savoir and their function in this context.!? By lieux de savoir we mean different spaces where practical-empirical knowledge was produced and exchanged, especially anatomy theatres, botanical gardens, natural history and antiquarian collections, but also academies or economic and patriotic societies.!?

Considering these multiple networks, research practices and lieux de savoir, which enabled naturalists to collect and process natural history data and information during the early modern period, we can say that research in these fields was actually polyphonic and multifarious: a combination of different “cultures of natural history”, learned as well as popular.!* They came into contact through different research practices, such as questionnaires, and findings were eventually published in scholarly publications.!5 We can provide evidence of knowledge making as a multi-layered, non-linear process, a collective enterprise that

(Cologne: Bóhlau, 2017); Regina Dauser et al., eds., Wissen im Netz: Botanik und Pflanzentransfer in europäischen Korrespondenznetzen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie- Verlag, 2008). For an example of local/transregional correspondence: Boscani Leoni, "Unglaubliche Bergwunder".

12 Arthur MacGregor, ed., Naturalists in the Field: Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

13 On global scientific practices between 1750 and 1850: Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood, Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). For the concept of lieu de savoir: Christian Jacob, ed., Lieux de savoir: espaces et communautés (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007); Paula Findlen, "Anatomy Theaters, Botanical Gardens, and Natural History Collections, in The Cambridge History of Science: Early Modern Science, ed. Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); René Sigrist, Eric Widmer, and Wladimir Berelowitsch, "Les lieux des sciences dans l'Europe moderne,” in Lieux d'Europe: mythes et limites, ed. Stella Ghervas and Francois Rosset (Paris: Ed. de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2008). See also: Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

14 Forpioneer work on these topics, see: Nicholas Jardine, Emma Spare, and James A. Secord, eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Nicholas Jardine and Emma Spary, “Worlds of History” in Curry, Jardine, Secord, Spary, Worlds of Natural History.

15 Simona Boscani Leoni, “Queries and Questionnaires: Collecting Local and Popular Knowledge in 17th and 18th Century Europe, in Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Geschichte des Wissens im Dialog — Connecting Science and Knowledge, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz, Silvia Flubacher, and Philipp Senn (Góttingen: V&R unipress, 2013).

involved diverse institutions and actors. The notion of “nature” emerged from different projections and ideals.

Some topics we have been scrutinising during the last few years offer further entry points from which to reach a clearer understanding of the collaborative culture of naturalists worldwide in the long 18th century: in particular, the investigation of the role of botanical networks and of economic societies in the discussion and dissemination of natural knowledge. Looking at different types of sources, such as letters, plant lists and printed botanical works by different actors (naturalists, but also state officials, merchants, and priests), we have been examining the ways in which books, plants, and seeds circulated from one continent to another, between big cities, capitals, small towns and more isolated places, for example in mountain regions. From these sources we understand that the geography of knowledge was relative and complex indeed. It encompassed hub cities — which housed universities and a plethora of other lieux de savoir and were directly connected to Atlantic ports —, peripheral towns and villages on a global scale and the problem of acceptance of other (i.e. non-European) forms of knowledge (see Stefanie Gánger's contribution in this volume).!6 In that respect, we have to consider the existence of different levels in the relationship between centres of knowledge production and so-called “peripheries.” The exchange of Alpine plants, for example, and the special therapeutic qualities credited to Alpine air, milk and plants shows that there was something exceptional about these supposedly barren regions in Europe. Their exceptionality, combined with the limited knowledge of their “wild” nature, turns them into a sort of intra-European counterpart to non-European exoticism, as well as other peripheral regions (for more on this, see Meike Knittel's, Simona Boscani Leoni's, Barbara Orland's and Stefanie Gänger’s articles in this volume).!”

16 On this topic: Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Marie-Noélle Bourguet, “Voyages lointains et mesure du monde: la projection du regard européen sur le monde (vers 1500-vers 1800),” in L'Europe des sciences et des techniques XV *-XVIII* siècles: un dialogue des savoirs, ed. Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Fabien Simon, and Marie Thébaud-Sorger (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016); Bruno Latour, “Comment redistribuer le Grand Partage?,” Revue de synthése 10 (1983); Latour, "Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together" in Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Pastand Present, vol. 6, ed. Henrika Kuklick and Elizabeth Long (Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, 1986), 6.

17 On the “exotic Alps”: Bernhard C. Schár, “On the Tropical Origins of the Alps: Science and the Colonial Imagination of Switzerland, 1700-1900,’ in Colonial Switzerland: Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins, eds. Patricia Purtschert and Harald Fischer-Tiné (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Simona Boscani Leoni, "The Discovery of the Alps:

Regarding the development of botanical and agronomic studies during the ı8th century, it is worth mentioning the rise of economic-patriotic societies, which conducted surveys on territories (Sarah Baumgartner, Martin Stuber).!® These institutions were very important local actors in the process of mapping territories: they were interested in conducting the most precise surveys possible of the agricultural, economic and human resources of a region, trying - somewhat paternalistically — to involve peasants in the process of "optimisation" of agriculture.!? In this context, too, the reception and circulation of knowledge must be considered as an active process, strongly dependent on the particular circumstances and on the interests of the actors involved.?0 Measuring territories cartographically and cataloguing the flora, fauna, and minerals of an area also influenced (and still does) the perception of the

Between ‘Science’ and Exoticism,’ in Exotic Switzerland? Looking Outward in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Noémie Etienne, Claire Brizon, Chonja Lee, and Etienne Wismer (Berlin: Diaphanes, 2020). For other remote regions and 18th century natural history, see e.g.: Linda Andersson Burnett, “An Eighteenth-Century Ecology of Knowledge: Patronage and Natural History” Culture Unbound - Journal of Current Cultural Research 6 (2014).

18 For example: Koen Stapelbroek and Jani Marjanen, eds., The Rise of Economic Societies in the Eighteenth Century: Patriotic Reform in Europe and North America (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); see also: Alix Cooper, "The "Possibilities of the Land': The Inventory of Natural Riches' in the Early Modern Territories, in Oeconomies in the Age of Newton, eds. Margaret Schabas and Neil de Marchi (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

19 OntheEconomicEnlightenmentandits"culture ofinnovation" (Innovationskultur): Marcus Popplow, "Die Ókonomische Aufklárung als Innovationskultur des 18. Jahrhunderts zur optimierten Nutzung natürlicher Ressourcen,” in Landschaften agrarisch-ökonomischen Wissens: Strategien innovativer Ressourcennutzung in Zeitschriften und Sozietäten des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Marcus Popplow (Münster: Waxmann, 2010).

20 On the concepts of transfer/circulation of knowledge, for example: Claire Gantet and Markus Meumann, eds., Les échanges savants franco-allemands au XVIII* siécle: transferts, circulations et réseaux (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2019); Mitchell G. Ash, “Wissens- und Wissenschaftstransfer — einführende Bemerkungen,’ Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 29, no. 3 (2006); Silvia Capanema, Quentin Deluermoz, Michel Molin, and Marie Redon, eds., Du transfert culturel au métissage: concepts, acteurs, pratiques (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, "Interpreting Cultural Transfer and the Consequences of Markets and Exchange: Reconsidering Fumi-E, in Artistic and Cultural Exchanges Between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections, ed. Michael North (London: Routledge, 2010); Michel Espagne, “Der theoretische Stand der Kulturtransferforschung," in Kulturtransfer: Kulturelle Praxis im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolfgang Schmale (Innsbruck: Studien- Verlag, 2003); Ortmayr, "Kulturpflanzentransfers 1492-1900".

different regions; in other words, such undertakings are an important component of “making landscapes"!

Natural history was at once "local" and "global" As we pointed out at the beginning of this Introduction, in 1716 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer published a bibliography of all books on natural history from the Renaissance to the 18th century, under the title of Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis omnium Terrae Regionum inservientium.??

His idea was to assemble the different "local" natural histories into a natural history of the world. To explain the intentions of his enterprise, he wrote in the Preface to his Bibliotheca scriptorum:

I know that the natural history of a territory is related to the natural history of many others, which are sometimes very remote. We cannot investigate one territory without knowing the other ones. I sometimes needed to look for Switzerland in the Indies and for the Indies in Switzerland.?3

The Bibliotheca scriptorum shows how Scheuchzer interpreted the natural history of Switzerland (and its ^wild" landscapes, the Alps) from the perspective of an increased presence of Europeans in non-Europeans areas and in terms of a discovery of the “exotic.”?* In the chapter devoted to the Americas, Scheuchzer not only highlighted the vastness of the country and the fertility of the lands, but he also mentioned about forty authors of naturalistic texts devoted to the New Continent.?? These included Johannes Fragoso, a Toledo doctor at the

21 We subscribe to W. J. Thomas Mitchell's definition of landscapes “as a process by which social and subjective identities are formed” W. J. Thomas Mitchell, “Introduction” in Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. Thomas Mitchell, 2nd ed. (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1; Daniel Speich, “Mountains Made in Switzerland: Facts and Concerns in Nineteenth-Century Cartography,” Science in Context 22, no. 3 (2009).

22 Scheuchzer, Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis omnium Terrae Regionum inservientium; historiae naturalis Helvetiae Prodromus; accessit celeberrimi viri Jacobi Le Long, Bibliothecarii Oratoriani de Scriptoribus historiae naturalis Galliae; collegit Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Med. D. Math. Prof. Societ. Leopoldino-Carolinae, Regiae Angl. & Boruss.

24 This form of thought is at the basis of the development of colonial thought in the 18th century. On the topic: Bernhard C. Schár, "Bauern und Hirten reconsidered: Umrisse der 'erfundenen Schweiz’ im imperialen Raum,” in Postkoloniale Schweiz: Formen und Folgen eines Kolonialismus ohne Kolonien, ed. Patricia Purtschert (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012).

25 Scheuchzer, Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis omnium Terrae Regionum inservientium; historiae naturalis Helvetiae Prodromus; accessit celeberrimi viri Jacobi Le Long,

BIBLIOTHECA

Scriptorum Hiftoriz Naturali omnium Terre Regionum infervientium.

Prodromus.

Acceffit Celeberrimi Viri

JACOBI LE LONG,

Bibliothecarii Oratoriani De Scriptoribus

Hiftoriz Naturalis Gallia.

Collegit

JOH. JACOBUS SCHEUCHZER.

Med. D. Math. Prof. Societ.

TI GILRI,

Typis HENRICI BODMERI.

M DCC XVI.

FIGURE 1.2 Frontispiece of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Bibliotheca scriptorum historiae naturalis omnium Terrae Regionum inservientium; historiae naturalis Helvetiae Prodromus; accessit Celeberrimi Viri Jacobi Le Long, Bibliothecarii Oratoriani de Scriptoribus historiae naturalis Galliae; collegit Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Med. D. Math. Prof. Societ. Leopoldino- Carolinae, Regiae Angl. & Boruss. (Tiguri: typis Henrici Bodmeri, 1716). ETH-Bibliothek Zurich, Shelf mark: Rar 10537 court of Philip 11, Francisco Hernández (in the 1651 edition), Nardo Antonio Recchi, Francisco Ximenez, and Nicolás Monardes (also cited in Scheuchzer's chapter on Asia) together with the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. These observations about the Bibliotheca scriptorum are noteworthy because they underline once more a central topic of this book, i.e. the linkage between local and global natural history, as well as the importance of the American and Asian territories for an inventory of the natural history of the world (one that included human beings).?®

The contributions assembled in this volume examine from a comparative perspective the exploration of the different "local natures" and the discovery of "local inhabitants and their history" in a period marked by an increase in scientific travels and expeditions around the world. They give crucial impetus to the debate on the periodization of this "discovery of the indigenous," and the different stages of this development, while bringing to light the social and cultural practices of natural history, the media, methods and tools used to collect, classify and communicate information on territories.2” Through four chapters dealing with Switzerland the book also insists on the entanglement of local and global networks of natural and civil history in the modern age, placing the Old Confederacy, a landlocked territory with no colonies, within the developments of global knowledge (but also global trade). To return to Scheuchzer's quotation about the Indies in Switzerland and Switzerland in the Indies, this shows well the deep connections, of which the naturalists themselves were aware, during the European colonisation of the Americas and the import of