ECU Libraries Catalog

Assembling the tropics : science and medicine in Portugal's empire, 1450-1700 / Hugh Cagle (University of Utah).

Author/creator Cagle, Hugh author.
Format Book and Print
Publication Info Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Copyright Notice ©2018
Descriptionxix, 364 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Subject(s)
Series Studies in comparative world history
Studies in comparative world history. ^A254721
Contents 1. Reading between the Lines -- Part I. The Coast of Africa, 1450-1550: 2. Dead Reckonings -- Part II. The Indian Ocean World, 1500-1600: 3. Itineraries and Inventories ; 4. Drug Traffic ; 5. Facts and Fictions -- Part III. The Portuguese Atlantic, 1550-1700: 6. Moral Hazards ; 7. Split Decisions ; 8. Fault Lines ; 9. Epilogue: South-South Exchanges.
Abstract "From popular fiction to modern biomedicine, the tropics are defined by two essential features: prodigious nature and debilitating illness. That was not always so. In this engaging and imaginative study, Hugh Cagle shows how such a vision was created. Along the way, he challenges conventional accounts of the Scientific Revolution. The history of "the tropics" is the story of science in Europe's first global empire. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Portugal established colonies from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia and South America, enabling the earliest comparisons of nature and disease across the tropical world. Assembling the Tropics shows how the proliferation of colonial approaches to medicine and natural history led to the assemblage of "the tropics" as a single, coherent, and internally consistent global region. This is a story about how places acquire medical meaning, about how nature and disease become objects of scientific inquiry, and about what is at stake when that happens"--Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references (pages 313-342) and index.
Issued in other formebook version : 9781108195300
Genre/formHistory.
LCCN 2018021310
ISBN9781107196636 hardcover alkaline paper
ISBN1107196639 hardcover alkaline paper

Available Items

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks RC961 .C17 2018 ✔ Available Place Hold