Article ID: CBB802316426

Contextualising the “American race” in the Atlantic: The case of Carl von Martius and his German and Iberian sources (2019)

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This paper addresses the place of the Bavarian scholar Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868) within the complex process of development of a ‘natural history of man’ in the nineteenth century. Martius’ understanding of natural history primarily focused on the notion of ‘American race’, i.e. one of the four or five races described by J.F. Blumenbach and C. Linnaeus. In this paper, I elucidate the geopolitical and intellectual coordinates which circumscribed Martius’ thought. I call the attention to the influence of the so-called German ‘Romantic science,’ as well as to Iberian sources which played a crucial role in Martius’ construction of the notion of the ‘American man.’ Martius’ travel narratives created grounds for a transatlantic natural history, in which the unit of analysis is the South Atlantic Ocean and involves a complex and archaic consortium of monarchs. This geopolitical alignment was circumscribed by religious, economic, and scientific ties which connected several nation-states and empires, including Austria, Bavaria, Brazil and Portugal.

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Authors & Contributors
Collingwood-Whittick, Sheila
Douglas, Bronwen
Gurka, Dezső
Howes, Hilary S.
Kaplan, Jonathan Michael
Kyllingstad, Jon Røyne
Journals
History of the Human Sciences
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
British Journal for the History of Science
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
History and Anthropology
Publishers
Ashgate
Brill
Schöningh
Open Book Publishers
Gondolat Verlag
Concepts
Science and race
Physical anthropology
Natural history
Romanticism
Eugenics
Nationalism
People
Martius, Karl Friedrich Philipp von
Boule, Pierre Marcellin
Gould, Stephen Jay
Meyer, Adolf Bernhard
Morton, Samuel George
Quatrefages de Bréau, Jean Louis Armand de
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
Enlightenment
Places
Brazil
Great Britain
Germany
Australia
Europe
France
Institutions
University of Edinburgh
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