1st Edition
Global Perspectives in Modern Italian Culture Knowledge and Representation of the World in Italy from the Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century
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.
Introduction
Guido Abbattista
Part I: Confronting World Diversity, 16-18th Century
1. ‘Reason of State’ and Universal History: Boccalini and Botero
Girolamo Imbruglia
2. The Idea of Ottoman Despotism in the Relazioni of the Venetian Ambassadors
Giuseppe Trebbi
3. The Turkish Enemy and the Eastern European Space in Giambattista Vico’s Deeds of Antonio Carafa
Stefania Sini
4. From the Americas to Rome: Paths of Knowledge Among the Roman Curia During the Seventeenth Century
Giovanni Pizzorusso
5. Confronting Nationalities: Italian Jesuits in China in the late Seventeenth Century
Irene Gaddo
6. Italian Intermediation and Knowledge of The Languages and Cultures Of India: The Narrative Practices Regarding the ‘Other’ in Missionaries’ Writings
Cristina Muru
7. The Mapmaking of the Italian States. Circulation, Transnational Debates and Geographical Networks in the Italian Scientific Academies during the Long Eighteenth Century
Marco Petrella
8. A Persian Matteo Ricci: Muḥammad Zamān’s Seventeenth-Century Translation of De Christiana Expeditione Apud Sinas
Francesco Calzolaio-Stefano Pellò
Part II: Representing World Diversity, 19-20th Century
9. Representing Asia in Il Costume antico e moderno by Giulio Ferrario
Rolando Minuti
10. Voices on China in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Culture (1800-1850)
Guido Abbattista
11. The World seen from Milan: Illustrated Travel Journals in the Nineteenth Century
Francesca Tacchi
12. Columbus and the Others. The Historiographic and Schoolbook Image of the Italian Navigators
Claudio Rosso
13. The Atlantic Slave Trade on Italian Shores. The Case of The Kingdom of Sardinia (1815-1853)
Marco Mariano
14. From The Banks of the Neva: Italian Diplomats and Representations of Russia in 1862-1914
Andrea Borelli
15. Antonello Gerbi’s Discovery of the New World. Life Experience and the Practice of History (1938-1948)
Maria Matilde Benzoni
Biography
Guido Abbattista is Professor of Modern History at the University of Trieste.
