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Abstract
The modern concept of “discovery” was the creation of the “second scientific revolution” in the decades to either side of 1800. The wholesale reconfiguration of knowledge practices emphasized the Romantic figure of the lone, daring adventurer who could interrogate the dynamic and ever-shifting world to discern new truths. “Discovery” was transformed from an act of investigation into an act laden with social and cultural significance, not least of Western intellectual superiority. The new conception was formulated through Anglophone reinterpretations of Columbus, within a stadial philosophy of history, as a heroic man of science, from William Robertson’s History of America (1777) to Washington Irving’s History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828). The new concept of “discovery” further required historical assessment and validation, giving rise to the new scholarly formation of “the history of discoveries.”
Le concept moderne de « la découverte » a été créé pendant « la deuxième révolution scientifique » des décennies avant et après l’année 1800. La reconfiguration systématique des pratiques du savoir a souligné le personnage romantique de l’aventurier solitaire et hardi qui pouvait interroger le monde dynamique et toujours changeant afin de discerner de nouvelles vérités. « La découverte » a été transformée d’un acte d’investigation à un acte chargé de signification sociale et culturelle, notamment de la supériorité intellectuelle de l’Occident. La nouvelle conception a été formulée grâce aux réinterprétations anglophones de Christophe Colomb en tant qu’homme de science héroïque, dans une philosophie d’histoire stadiaire, en commençant avec History of America (1777) de William Robertson, jusqu’à l’œuvre de Washington Irving, History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828). Le nouveau concept de « la découverte » a exigé, en plus, de l’évaluation et de la validation historiques, ce qui a mené à la nouvelle formation érudite de « l’histoire des découvertes. »
El concepto moderno de “descubrimiento” fue una creación de la “segunda revolución científica” de las décadas inmediatamente anteriores y posteriores a 1800. La reconfiguración general de las prácticas del conocimiento dio énfasis a la figura romántica del aventurero audaz y solitario, capaz de interrogar un mundo dinámico y siempre cambiante para discernir nuevas verdades. El “descubrimiento” pasó de ser un acto de investigación a un acto cargado de significaciones sociales y culturales, de las cuales la superioridad intelectual occidental no era la menor. Esta nueva concepción fue formulada a través de reinterpretaciones anglosajonas de Colón, en el marco de una filosofía estadial de la historia, como un hombre de ciencia heroico, desde la Historia de América de William Robertson (1777) hasta la Historia de la vida y viajes de Cristóbal Colón de Washington Irving (1828). El nuevo concepto de “descubrimiento” pasó a requerir una evaluación y validación históricas, dando así lugar a la nueva formación académica de “la historia de los descubrimientos.”
Notes
1 See, e.g., William H. Goetzmann, “A ‘Capacity for Wonder’: The Meanings of Exploration,” in A Continent Comprehended, ed. John Logan Allen, vol. 3 of North American Exploration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), pp. 521–45, esp. 521–23, re discovery as a universal, and 523–28, as a particular European formation.
2 Marica Milanesi, “Le regard de la postérité: L’âge des découvertes vu au XVIIe siècle et au XVIIIe siècle,” Médiévales 58, (2010), pp. 11–26, esp. 12. The same paradox is evident for cartography: Matthew H. Edney, Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), p. 5.
3 I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 91–101.
4 Especially, David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman, eds., Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams, “De-Centring the ‘Big Picture’: ‘The Origins of Modern Science’ and the Modern Origins of Science,” British Journal for the History of Science 26 (1993): pp. 407–32; and Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
5 Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, eds., Romanticism and the Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 1.
6 Tore Frängsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider, eds., The Quantifying Spirit in the 18th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
7 Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), p. xviii.
8 Compare Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), with Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
9 See Karen O’Brien, “Between Enlightenment and Stadial History: William Robertson on the History of Europe,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 16 (1993): pp. 53–63, esp. 55–56, and her Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 134–36.
10 Michael Bentley, Modern Historiography: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 3–4.
11 David Armitage, “The New World and British Historical Thought: From Richard Hakluyt to William Robertson,” in America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1995), pp. 52–75, esp. 66.
12 William Robertson, The History of America, 2 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Strahan, Cadell, Balfour, 1777), 1: xv–xvi (quotations), 2: pp. 523–35 (bibliography).
13 Cunningham and Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences; Noah Heringman, Romantic Science: The Literary Forms of Natural History (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003); Holmes, Age of Wonder; and Richard C. Sha, Imagination and Science in Romanticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).
14 Holmes, Age of Wonder, p. xvi.
15 Dane Kennedy, ed., Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 1.
16 Simon Schaffer, “Scientific Discoveries and the End of Natural Philosophy,” Social Studies of Science 16 (1986): pp. 387–420; and Adriana Craciun, “What Is an Explorer?” Eighteenth-Century Studies 45 (2011): pp. 29–51.
17 Dane Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 7–8.
18 Susan Faye Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period (New York: Science History Publications, 1978); and Simon Naylor and Simon Schaffer, “Nineteenth-Century Survey Sciences: Enterprises, Expeditions and Exhibitions. Introduction,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 73 (2019): pp. 135–47.
19 See, e.g., Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (New York: Vintage Books, 2015), pp. 1–2.
20 Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Essay on the Geography of Plants, translated by Stephen T. Jackson and Sylvie Romanowski (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009 [1805]).
21 Malcolm Nicolson, “Alexander von Humboldt and the Geography of Vegetation,” in The Modern Social Sciences, eds. Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross, vol. 7 of Cambridge History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 169–85, esp. 171; and Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopedia to Wikipedia (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), p. 13.
22 Jorge Cañizares Esguerra, “Sobre Humboldt y el colonialismo epistemológico: La Invención de la Naturaleza de Andrea Wulf,” Medium,
23 E.g., Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 13.
24 Daniel Defoe, A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, in Useful Arts, Particularly in the Great Branches of Commerce, Navigation, and Plantation, in All Parts of the Known World (London: for W. Mears, F. Clay, and D. Brown, 1725–26), pp. 264–65.
25 Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, 10 vols. (Geneva, 1781), 3: pp. 268–89 (quotation) and 275–91. Original: “Ce fut dans ces circonstances glorieuses, qu’un homme obscur, plus avancé que son siècle dans la connoissance de l’astonomie & de la navigation, proposa à l’Espagne heureuse au-dedans de s’agrandir au-dehors. Christophe Colomb sentoit comme par instinct qu’il devoit y avoir un autre continent, & que c’étoit à lui de le découvrir.”
26 Robertson, History of America. Robertson later prepared a third volume, on the English in Virginia and New England, that would be published posthumously by his son in 1796: O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, pp. 161–63.
27 William Robertson, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. With a View of the Progress of Society in Europe, from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Strahan, Cadell, Balfour, 1769), 1: p. xiii–xiv.
28 Jeffrey R. Smitten, The Life of William Robertson: Minister, Historian and Principal (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
29 László Kontler, Translations, Histories, Enlightenments: William Robertson in Germany, 1760–1795 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); and James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 196–97.
30 Robertson, History of America, 1: pp.4–65, 94, 91, 105–6, 110–11, 151–52.
31 Edmundo O’Gorman, The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of its History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), pp. 11–33; Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 100–2; José Rabasa, Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), esp. p. 30; and Michael F. Robinson, “Science and Exploration,” in Reinterpreting Exploration, ed. Kennedy, pp. 21–37, esp. 23–24.
32 Robertson, History of America, 1: pp. 149–50.
33 Quoted by Jeremy Black, “The Enlightenment Historian at Work: The Researches of William Robertson,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 65, (1988), pp. 251–60, item 1b.
34 Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano, 9 vols. (Madrid: Iuan Flamenco, 1601), 1: pp. 1–17.
35 D. A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 432–41; and Bruce P. Lenman, “‘From Savage to Scot’ via the French and Spaniards: Principal Robertson’s Spanish Sources,” in William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire, ed. Stewart J. Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 196–209, esp. p. 203.
36 Brown, ed., William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire; O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, pp. 129–66; and Armitage, “New World and British Historical Thought,” p. 64.
37 William Robertson, The History of Scotland, during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI. till His Accession to the Crown of England. With a Review of the Scotch History Previous to that Period, 2 vols. (London: Andrew Millar, 1759), 1: pp. 1–79.
38 Robertson, History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, 1: pp. 1–192, esp. 22.
39 Robertson, History of Scotland, 1: pp. 1–2.
40 O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, p. 153. Robertson would later continue the theme in an account of South Asia pre-1498: William Robertson, An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients Had of India, and the Progress of Trade with that Country Prior to the Discovery of the Passage to it by the Cape of Good Hope (London and Edinburgh: Strahan, Cadell, Balfour, 1791).
41 This phrase has been quoted by many modern scholars, e.g., Kontler, Translations, Histories, Enlightenments, p. 125.
42 Robertson, History of America, 1: pp. 1–57.
43 Robertson, History of America, 1: pp. 23, 11, 36 (block quote), 37–40.
44 Robertson, History of America, 1: p. 41.
45 Robertson, History of America, 1: p. 147.
46 See Neal Hargraves, “Enterprise, Adventure and Industry: The Formation of ‘Commercial Character’ in William Robertson’s History of America,” History of European Ideas 29, (2003), pp. 33–54, esp. pp. 44–46.
47 Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, Commonly call’d, the West-Indies, from the First Discovery thereof, translated by John Stevens, 6 vols. (London: Jer. Batley, 1725–26).
48 The World Displayed; or, a Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels, Selected from the Writers of all Nations, 20 vols. (London: for J. Newbery, 1759–61), 1: pp. iii–xxxii (history of exploration), pp. 1–4 (Columbus’s career and rationale). See Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Knopf, 1990), p. 332.
49 Lilian Handlin, “Discovering Columbus,” American Scholar 62 (1993): pp. 81–95, esp. 86.
50 Delno C. West and August Kling, “Columbus and Columbia: A Brief Survey of the Early Creation of the Columbus Symbol in American History,” Studies in Popular Culture 12 (1989): pp. 45–60, esp. 46–47, citing Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985). Also E. McClung Fleming, “From Indian Princess to Greek Goddess: The American Image, 1783–1815,” Winterthur Portfolio 3 (1965): pp. 37–66.
51 Alice P. Kenney, “America Discovers Columbus: Biography as Epic, Drama, History,” Biography 4 (1981): pp. 45–65, esp. 46–49; Sale, Conquest of Paradise, pp. 333–41; Claudia L. Bushman, America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero (Hanover, NH: University Presses of New England, 1992), 81–106; Thomas J. Schlereth, “Columbia, Columbus, and Columbianism,” Journal of American History 79 (1992): pp. 937–68, esp. 938–43; Lilian Handlin, “The Massachusetts Historical Society and Its Columbuses,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 3rd ser. 104 (1992): pp. 12–20; Handlin, “Discovering Columbus”; Ann Uhry Abrams, “Visions of Columbus: The ‘Discovery’ Legend in Antebellum American Paintings and Prints,” American Art Journal 25 (1993): 74–101; and John P. Larner, “North American Hero? Christopher Columbus, 1702–2002,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137 (1993): pp. 46–63, esp. 49–52.
52 Sale, Conquest of Paradise, 333; and Thomas F. Heck, “Toward a Bibliography of Operas on Columbus: A Quincentennial Checklist,” Notes 49 (1992): pp. 474–97.
53 Joselyn M. Almeida, “The Sight of a New World: Discovery and Romanticism,” Wordsworth Circle 32 (2001): pp. 148–51.
54 Sale, Conquest of Paradise, p. 332.
55 Martín Fernandez de Navarrete, ed., Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV, 5 vols. (Madrid: Imp. Real, 1825–37).
56 Washington Irving, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 4 vols. (London: John Murray, 1828).
57 Mary Witherspoon Bowden, Washington Irving (Boston: Twayne, 1981), pp. 111–19; Kenney, “America Discovers Columbus,” pp. 49–50; Edwin T. Bowden, Washington Irving Bibliography (Boston: Twayne, 1988), pp. 288–334; Bushman, America Discovers Columbus, pp. 107–26; Sale, Conquest of Paradise, pp. 341–43; Schlereth, “Columbia, Columbus, and Columbianism,” pp. 943–44; and Larner, “North American Hero?” pp. 52–53.
58 Irving, Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1: p. 10.
59 Irving, Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 4: p. 54.
60 Irving, Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1: pp. 61, 117–30, 63.
61 Antoine Jean Letronne, “Des opinions cosmographiques des pères de l’église,” Revue des deux mondes 1, (1834): pp. 601–33. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (New York: Praeger, 1991), pp. 51–67.
62 From Manuel Francisco de Barros e Sousa, Viscount of Santarém, Essai sur l’histoire de la cosmographie et de la cartographie pendant le Moyen Age, et sur les progrès de la géographie après les grandes découvertes du XVe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Maulde et Renou, 1849–52), to Edward Herbert Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and Romans (London: John Murray, 1879).
63 Sale, Conquest of Paradise, pp. 345–49; and Larner, “North American Hero?” pp. 55–58.
64 The millennial surge in the faith-based belief that the earth is flat is in part based on the continued presence of Irving’s arguments, but inverted, so that the scholastics are deemed to have in fact been correct and that the “round-earth myth” was created by Columbus and others only four to five hundred years ago. Conversely, critics of Creationism continue to cling to the same false history, but not inverted, so as to maintain the “conflict theory” that religious faith is utterly and inherently opposed to science (and that Columbus was a scientist). See Tim O’Neill, “‘Aron Ra’ Gets Everything Wrong,” History for Atheists https://historyforatheists.com/(18 August 2019).
65 Alexander von Humboldt, Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent et des progrès de l’astronomie nautique aux quinzième et seizième siècles, 5 vols. (Paris: Librarie de Gide, 1836–39), 1: pp. viii–ix, xv, also 1–3.
66 Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1845–62); Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, translated by Elise C. Otté, 5 vols. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1849–58). See Ottmar Ette, “Everything is Interrelated, even the Errors in the System: Alexander von Humboldt and Globalization,” Atlantic Studies 7 (2010): pp. 113–26.
67 O’Gorman, Invention of America, pp. 33–40.
68 James Playfair, A System of Geography, Ancient and Modern, 6 vols. (Edinburgh and London: Peter Hill and Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, 1808–14), 1: pp. i–cxcii.
69 John Blair, “On the Rise and Progress of Geography,” in Fourteen Maps of Ancient and Modern Geography (London: 1768), pp. 1–20.
70 Playfair, System of Geography, 1: pp. cix–cx (quotation), cxxx–cxxxii.
71 See the editorial note in John Smith, The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631) in Three Volumes, ed. Philip L. Barbour, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for The Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, 1986), p. 400 n. 2.
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Matthew H. Edney
Matthew H. Edney is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography, University of Southern Maine, and director of the History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin–Madison. His most recent books are Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (Chicago, 2019) and, edited with Mary S. Pedley, Cartography in the European Enlightenment, Volume Four of The History of Cartography (Chicago, 2019). He blogs at mappingasprocess.net. This essay is a spin-off from his current writing project, entitled Mapping, History, Theory, which comprises a historiographical analysis of the various fields of map history and a critique of the sociocultural turn in map studies after 1980. He thanks Jordana Dym for inadvertently sending him down the rabbit hole that generated this essay. [email protected]