How to write the history of the New World
histories, epistemologies, and identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic world
- ISBN: 9780804746939
- Editorial: Stanford University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2001
- Lugar de la edición: Stanford. Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
- Encuadernación: Rústica
- Medidas: 23 cm
- Nº Pág.: 450
- Idiomas: Inglés
An Economist Book of the Year, 2001. In the 18th century, a debate ensued over the French naturalist Buffon#s contention that the New World was in fact geologically new. Historians, naturalists, and philosophers clashed over Buffon#s view. This book maintains that the #dispute# was also a debate over historical authority: upon whose sources and facts should naturalists and historians reconstruct the history of the New World and its people. In addressing this question, the author offers a strikingly novel interpretation of the Enlightenment.