Main description:

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.

Rather than 'follow in Humboldt's footsteps,' this book outlines the new critical horizon of post-Humboldtian Humboldt studies: the archaeology of all that lies buried under the Baron's epistemological footprint. Contrary to the popular image of Humboldt as a solitary 'adventurer' and 'hero of science' surrounded by New World nature, The Invention of Humboldt demonstrates that the Baron's opus and practice was largely derivative of the knowledge communities and archives of the Hispanic world. Although Humboldtian writing has invented a powerful cult that has served to erase the sources of his knowledge and practice, in truth Humboldt did not 'invent nature,' nor did he pioneer global science: he was the beneficiary of Iberian natural science and globalization. Nor was Humboldt a pioneering, 'postcolonial' cultural relativist. Instead, his anthropological views of the Americas were Orientalist and historicist and, in most ways, were less enlightened than those of his Creole contemporaries.

This book will reshape the landscape of Humboldt scholarship. It is essential reading for all those interested in Alexander von Humboldt, the Hispanic American enlightenment, and the global history of science and knowledge.

Contents:

1. The Apotheosis of Humboldt during the Nineteenth Century

Leoncio Lopez-Ocon

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 Gomez Gutierrez

5. An Archaeology of Mutis' Disappearing Gift to Humboldt

Jose 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

Jose 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 Canizares-Esguerra