Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Following on from recent interest in the idea of ‘place’ and the situated nature of science, this timely and fascinating book addresses the important question of what it might have once meant to speak of the local. Alix Cooper proposes that the idea of ‘local’ can, and should, be historicised. Like other highly significant organising concepts that emerged in medieval and early modern Europe (city, border, nation), it has a story. Cooper seeks its origins in the texts of early modern natural history, stretching the definition of early modern to include eighteenth-century authors, such as Buffon and Linnaeus. Much of the intellectual weight of the argument lies in her account of the cataloguing of plants, animals and minerals. Cooper's material mostly relates to medical personnel working in the German territories surrounding Nuremburg and Wurzburg, where learned physicians took on the role of publishing inventories of local nature, not just plants but also minerals and natural histories of particular territories. Indeed, at one level, physicians became spokesmen for the local. Yet these individuals also pruned and tailored the information they chose to publish, often excluding certain kinds of knowledge and realigning others. These parts of Cooper's story are innovative and intriguing, a real joy to read, passing from the quirky particulars of early natural history practices to new interpretative tools incorporating book history and a sensitive understanding of the power of travel.

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