In Amazonia (41 page)

73
. Viz. Michel de Certeau: “Discourse about the other is a means of constructing a discourse authorized by the other.”
Heterologies: Discourse on the Other
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 68. Cf. Michael T. Ryan, “Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History
23 (1981): 519–38, 521: “Neither Montaigne nor any other sceptic was particularly interested in seeing the world through the eyes of an exotic: That would simply be exchanging custom for custom, folly for folly.”

74
. John H. Elliott,
The Old World and the New
; Ryan, “Assimilating New Worlds”; Anthony Grafton,
New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Anthony Pagden, “‘The Impact of the New World on the Old': The History of an Idea,”
Renaissance and Modern Studies
30 (1986): 1–11; idem,
The Fall of Natural Man
; Gerbi,
Nature in the New World
; and Glacken,
Traces on the Rhodian Shore
.

75
. Grafton,
New Worlds
, 65–68; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park,
Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750
(New York: Zone Books, 1998), 63.

76
. Daston and Park,
Wonders
, 220. Although, given the limits of a discursive practice that failed to encompass atheism, for example, we should understand “free-for-all” in rather relative terms. My thanks to Carla Freccero for this observation.

77
. Roy Porter, “The Terraqueous Globe,” in
The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science
, ed. George S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 285–324; Grafton,
New Worlds
, 147, 207–12; Glacken,
Traces on the Rhodian Shore
, 357–66. A key question given little attention in these texts is the active opposition between Protestant and Catholic interpretations and experiences of the New World. This theme is explored more often in readings of French accounts (see, most famously, Jean de Léry,
History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America
, trans. Janet Whatley [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990], and, for important commentary, de Certeau,
The Writing of History
, 209–43; also Lestringant,
Mapping the Renaissance World
, on André Thévet). Clearly, though, the competition between religions and the associated national politics formed a complex strategic field of action for Ralegh. His treatment of the conquistadores as both source and inspiration for the Guiana campaign (
The Discoverie
as a “Spanish” text), his marriage into the suspect Throckmortons, and the whispers of atheism that hung around his inner circle were all fodder for his detractors—and ultimately the stuff from which the fatal charges of pro-Spanish conspiracy were manufactured.

78
. Gerbi,
Nature in the New World
, 61.

79
. Michel Foucault,
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
(New York: Vintage, 1994), 17–45, argues suggestively but schematically for similitude as the ordering principle of an early modern European episteme.

80
.
Whitehead,
Discoverie
, 146; emphasis in original.

81
. Ibid., 145.

82
. Cf. Greenblatt, “Introduction,” xi, on “one of the key principles of the Renaissance geographical imagination: eye-witness testimony, [which] for all its vaunted importance, sits as a very small edifice on top of an enormous mountain of hearsay, rumor, convention, and endlessly recycled fable.”

83
. Johannes Kepler,
Kepler's Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger
, ed. and trans. Edward Rosen (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1965), 17, cited in Pagden, “‘The Impact,'” 4.

84
. Andrews,
Trade, Plunder, and Settlement
, 27–31; Sherman,
John Dee
, 182–92.

85
. Hugh Honour,
The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time
(New York: Pantheon, 1975), 71–78; Grafton,
New Worlds
, 126.

86
. Hill,
Intellectual Origins
, 125.

87
. As the botanist John Ellis wrote, rather tartly, to Linnaeus in August 1768: “No people ever went to sea better fitted out for the purpose of Natural History, nor more elegantly. They have got a fine library of Natural History; they have all sorts of machines for catching and preserving insects; all kinds of nets, trawls, drags and hooks for coral fishing; they have even a curious contrivance of a telescope by which, put into the water, you can see the bottom to a great depth, where it is clear…. They have two painters and draughtsmen, several volunteers who have a tolerable notion of Natural History, in short Solander assured me this expedition would cost Mr Banks 10000 pounds.” Quoted in Ray Desmond,
Kew: The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens
(London: Harvill Press with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1995), 87.

88
. For a sense of the distinctiveness of these projects, see Allen J. Grieco, “The Social Politics of Pre-Linnean Botanical Classification,”
I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance
4 (1991): 131–49.

89
. Ralegh also experimented with brewing the famous “Guiana balsam” that, in 1612, failed to revive Prince Henry Stuart, his only significant protector at the Jacobean Court. See John W. Shirley, “The Scientific Experiments of Sir Walter Ralegh, the Wizard Earl, and the Three Magi in the Tower 1603–1617,”
Ambix
4, nos. 1–2 (1949): 52–66; Whitehead, “Introduction,” 30–31; Hill,
Intellectual Origins
, 131–32.

90
. Hill,
Intellectual Origins
, 16.

91
. Ibid., 66–67.

92
. Cambridge University did not have a chair of mathematics until 1663. A fine account of the history of Gresham College can be found in Hill,
Intellectual Origins
, 31–60.

93
. Eustace M. W. Tillyard,
The Elizabethan World Picture
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1943), 93; Paula Findlen,
Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Porter, “The Terraqueous Globe,” 289–90. For a sophisticated elaboration of this point, see Lorraine Daston, “The Nature of Nature in Early Modern Europe,”
Configurations
6, no. 2 (1998): 149–72.

94
.
Among outstanding works that pay attention to the relationship between early modern natural history, overseas discovery, and collecting, see Daston and Park,
Wonders
; Findlen,
Possessing Nature
; Krzysztof Pomian,
Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800
(Cambridge: Polity, 1990); Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds.,
The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe
(New York: Clarendon Press, 1985); Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds.,
Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe
(New York: Routledge, 2001); and Horst Bredekamp,
The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology
, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1995). Scott Atran,
Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Understanding of Science
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

95
. Stephen Greenblatt,
Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 103.

96
. On Dee, see Taylor,
Tudor Geography
; Sherman,
John Dee
; and, for the initial and effective revision, Nicholas H. Clulee,
John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion
(London: Routledge, 1988).

97
. Deborah E. Harkness,
John Dee's Conversations With Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Taylor,
Tudor Geography
, 77; Clulee,
John Dee
, 179–80.

98
. Agnes M. C. Latham,
Sir Walter Ralegh
(Writers and Their Work, No. 177. London: The British Council, 1964), 20–26. For a sustained attempt at empirical justification of Ralegh's claims, see Whitehead, “Introduction.”

99
. Campbell,
The Witness
, 219–54.

100
. Grafton,
New Worlds
, 37. See Hakluyt's marginal note on Keymis' refusal to describe “a sorte of people more monstrous” than the Ewaipanoma: “They have eminent heads like dogs, and live all the day time in the sea” (Keymis, “Relation,” 465).

101
. Daston and Park,
Wonders
, 149.

102
. For more detailed publishing histories, see Schomburgk, “Introduction,”
Discoverie
, lxvii, n. 1, and Whitehead, “Introduction,” 10–11.

103
. Campbell,
The Witness
, 226.

104
. Whitehead,
Discoverie
, 176; Campbell,
The Witness
, 227.

105
. Peter Hulme,
Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797
(London: Routledge, 1992), 94–101, 99–100.

106
. Tillyard,
The Elizabethan World Picture
, 93.

107
. Whitehead,
Discoverie
, 158.

108
. Ibid., 191.

109
. Ibid., 160.

110
. Ibid., 161.

111
. Ibid.

112
. Campbell,
The Witness
, 247.

113
. On Montaigne and the good savage, see Honour,
New Golden Land
, 66; on Mandeville and paradise, Greenblatt,
Marvelous Possessions
, 28–30.

114
.
Whitehead,
Discoverie
, 161.

115
. David Arnold,
The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). See also
Chapter 5
below.

116
. Whitehead,
Discoverie
, 162.

117
. Ibid.

118
. Ibid., 162–63. For a sustained analysis of the “ecstasis” of encounter, see Johannes Fabian,
Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Thanks to Annie Gray for making this connection.

119
. Edmund Spenser,
The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser
, 10 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, 1882–84), vol. IV, 200.

120
. Raymond Williams,
The Country and the City
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 22.

121
. Carter,
The Road to Botany Bay
, 243.

122
. Whitehead,
Discoverie
, 186–87.

123
. Ibid., 188, 168.

124
. Ibid., 163. This is a complicated moment. Ralegh describes the sacrificial crew member as a “negro.” Whitehead points out that no records mention a “negro” on this voyage, and, following V. S. Naipaul, argues that Ralegh fabricated the incident “to validate [his] experience in Orinoco as truly exotic.” Ibid., 104; V. S. Naipaul,
A Way in the World
(New York: Knopf, 1994).

125
. Whitehead, “Introduction,” 4–5; idem,
Discoverie
, 170, 163, n. 70. William M. Denevan, “Aboriginal Drained-field Cultivation in the Americas,”
Science
169 (1970): 647–54; William M. Denevan and Alberta Zucchi, “Ridged Field Excavations in the Central Orinoco Llanos,” in
Advances in Andean Archaeology
, ed. D. L. Browman (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 235–46.

126
. Michael J. Eden,
Ecology and Land Management in Amazonia
(London: Belhaven, 1990), 49.

127
. João Murça Pires and Ghillean T. Prance, “The Vegetation Types of the Brazilian Amazon,” in
Key Environments: Amazonia
, ed. Ghillean T. Prance and Thomas E. Lovejoy (London: Pergamon, 1985), 131–39; Otto Huber, “Significance of Savanna Vegetation in the Amazon Territory of Venezuela,” in
Biological Diversification in the Tropics
, ed. Ghillean T. Prance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 221–24.

128
. Keymis, “Relation,” 475.

129
. Nineteenth-century British colonists in Australia similarly used Aboriginal tracks and trails as settler roads. However, Aboriginal land management was widely recognized and discussed by Europeans at the time. See Carter,
The Road to Botany Bay
, 335–45.

130
. Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, “The First Voyage Made to the Coasts of
America
, with Two Barks, Where in Were Captaines M.
Philip Amadas
, and M.
Arthur Barlowe
, who Discovered Part of the Countrey now called Virginia, Anno 1584. Written by One of the Said Captaines, and Sent to Sir
Walter Ralegh
, Knight, At Whose Charge and direction the Said Voyage was Set
Forth,” in Richard Hakluyt,
The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation
, ed. David B. Quinn and Raleigh A. Skelton, vol. 3 (Hakluyt Society Extra Series No. 39. London: Hakluyt Society, 1965 [1589]), 728–33, 731. For reasons that remain a mystery to me, this line was excised from the edition of 1600 and consequently does not appear in the definitive modern MacLehose edition of 1903–5.

131
. Michel de Montaigne,
Selected Essays
, trans. Charles Cotton and William C. Hazlitt, ed. Blanchard Bates (New York: Random House, 1949), 80.