How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Author/Contributor(s):	Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Date:	04/16/2002
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

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.