Article ID: CBB001213513

Fossil Dealers, the Practices of Comparative Anatomy and British Diplomacy in Latin America, 1820--1840 (2013)

unapi

This paper traces the trade routes of South American fossil mammal bones in the 1830s, thus elaborating both local and intercontinental networks that ascribed new meanings to objects with little intrinsic value. It analyses the role of British consuls, natural-history dealers, administrative instructions and naturalists, who took the bones from the garbage pits of ranches outside Buenos Aires and delivered them into the hands of anatomists. For several years, the European debates on the anatomy of Megatherium were shaped by the arrival in London of a small living mammal and the ideas and evidence received from Montevideo on the existence of huge fossil bony armours. These debates culminated late in 1838 in the creation of the extinct genus Glyptodon by Richard Owen as a result of the exchange of letters, objects and depictions, and a series of contingent events. Based on primary sources and South American scholarship, this paper aims to contribute to the current debates among historians of science about the mobility of knowledge, as well as presenting the condition that made Charles Darwin's work possible.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001213513/

Similar Citations

Book Jones, Claire; (2013)
The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870--1914 (/isis/citation/CBB001202367/)

Article Buckland, Adelene; (2008)
Thomas Hardy, Provincial Geology and the Material Imagination (/isis/citation/CBB001022463/)

Book Cushman, Gregory T.; (2013)
Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (/isis/citation/CBB001202077/)

Chapter Raj, Kapil; (2009)
Mapping Knowledge Go-Betweens in Calcutta, 1770--1820 (/isis/citation/CBB000954195/)

Book Igler, David; (2013)
The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (/isis/citation/CBB001201479/)

Book Giráldez, Arturo; (2015)
The Age of Trade: Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy (/isis/citation/CBB001422147/)

Book McCusker, John J.; (2006)
History of world trade since 1450 (/isis/citation/CBB001180671/)

Article Gänger, Stefanie; (2015)
World Trade in Medicinal Plants from Spanish America, 1717--1815 (/isis/citation/CBB001422192/)

Article Engel, Alexander; (2015)
Buying Time: Futures Trading and Telegraphy in Nineteenth-Century Global Commodity Markets (/isis/citation/CBB001422664/)

Book Gill, David James; (2014)
Britain and the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy, 1964--1970 (/isis/citation/CBB001552231/)

Thesis Deringer, William Peter; (2012)
Calculated Values: The Politics and Epistemology of Economic Numbers in Britain, 1688--1738 (/isis/citation/CBB001567371/)

Article Phillips, Sarah T.; Potts, Dale; Petty, Adrienne; Schultz, Mark; Stalcup, Sam; Effland, Anne; (2013)
Reflections on One Hundred and Fifty Years of the United States Department of Agriculture (/isis/citation/CBB001320820/)

Authors & Contributors
Rockel, Stephen J.
Reinhardt, Anne
Gill, David James
Engel, Alexander
McCusker, John J.
Jones, C L
Concepts
Trade
Commerce
Foreign relations; diplomacy
Science and politics
Trade routes
Ships and shipbuilding
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
20th century, early
17th century
16th century
Places
Great Britain
Pacific Ocean
Yangtze River
Manila (Philippines)
Calcutta (India)
Southern states (U.S.)
Institutions
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
United States. Department of Agriculture
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment