ABSTRACT
The histories of other empires would yield other and valuable information about the problem, but evidence from the English-speaking world is nevertheless distinctively revealing. The key phrase “knowledge is power” is attributed to the early modern English philosopher and jurist Francis Bacon. At first, America was a scientific problem, a riot of heretofore unknown phenomena. Astonishing plants, animals, minerals, and peoples either had to be rendered legible, as cognates of what had already been described for other parts of the world, or else explained as so qualitatively different from the known world, particularly Europe, that existing states of knowledge had to be signficantly reenvisioned. To the extent that the English were defining the Americas as places where they could flourish, they also conceived of them as places where they could prosper. Their descriptions of natural resources were therefore almost never neutral assessments but likely to be linked to promotional schemes.
