The book analyses from a comparative perspective the exploration of territories, the histories of their inhabitants, and local natural environments during the long eighteenth century. The eleven chapters look at European science at home and abroad as well as at global scientific practices and the involvement of a great variety of local actors in the processes of mapping and recording. Dealing with landlocked territories with no colonies (like Switzerland) and places embedded in colonial networks, the book reveals multifarious entanglements connecting these territories.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction: From Switzerland to the Indies / Meike Knittel
pt. 1 Naturalists‘ Methods
2. Between the Americas and Europe: Mapping Territories through Questionnaires, 16th-18th Centuries / Simona Boscani Leoni
3. (Re-)Shaping a Method: Field Research and Experimental Legacy in Vallisneri’s Primi Itineris Specimen (1705) / Francesco Luzzini
4. Flora Near and Far: Accumulating Knowledge on Plants in Eighteenth-Century Zurich / Meike Knittel
5. The Secrets of Indians: Native Knowers in Enlightenment Natural Histories of the Southern Americas / Stefanie Ganger
pt. 2 Authorities‘ and Societies‘ Strategies
6. Change and Continuity: The Bureaucracy of Knowledge in South America / Irina Podgorny
7. Questionnaires, Parish Registers and Prize Competitions: The Zurich Physical Society’s Sources and Methods for Surveying the Territory / Sarah Baumgartner
8. Social Anthropology avant la lettre: The Economic Enlightenment Perspective on Traditional Uses of Wetlands / Martin Stuber
pt. 3 Defining Territories
9. Divergent Perception: Deserts and Mountains in Transition to Modernity, Seen through Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of Nature / Jon Mathieu
10. Alpine Landscapes of Health: The Swiss Whey Cure and Therapeutic Tourism between 1750 and 1870 / Barbara Orland
11. Creation of „Scientific“ Knowledge: The Asiatick Society and Exploration of the Himalaya, 1784-1850 / Chetan Singh.