ABSTRACT
Global Perspectives in Modern Italian Culture presents a series of unexplored case studies from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, each demonstrating how travellers, scientists, Catholic missionaries, scholars and diplomats coming from the Italian peninsula contributed to understandings of various global issues during the age of early globalization. It also examines how these individuals represented different parts of the world to an Italian audience, and how deeply Italian culture drew inspiration from the increasing knowledge of world ‘Otherness’. The first part of the book focuses on the production of knowledge, drawing on texts written by philosophers, scientists, historians and numerous other first-hand eyewitnesses. The second part analyses the dissemination and popularization of knowledge by focussing on previously understudied published works and initiatives aimed at learned Italian readers and the general public. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern and modern European history, as well as those interested in global history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|144 pages
Confronting world diversity, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries
chapter 4|18 pages
From the Americas to Rome
chapter 5|18 pages
Confronting nationalities
chapter 6|19 pages
Italian intermediation and knowledge of the languages and cultures of India
chapter 7|18 pages
The mapmaking of the Italian states
chapter 8|15 pages
A Persian Matteo Ricci
part II|145 pages
Representing world diversity, nineteenth to twentieth centuries