Books by Benjamin Breen
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019
Papers by Benjamin Breen
Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World, 2019
Empires of Knowledge: Scientific Networks in the Early Modern World, 2018
Joao Curvo Semedo was ideally positioned to perform balancing act between the traditional rhetori... more Joao Curvo Semedo was ideally positioned to perform balancing act between the traditional rhetorical modes of the early modern European medical establishment and what Junia Ferreira Furtado has called the “tropical empiricism” of the Portuguese colonies. By 1706, Joao Curvo Semedo was boasting in another pamphlet that his bezoartico had grown popular enough to be “sold throughout the kingdom,” but refrained from detailing its contents except to state that it “consists of sixteen ingredients” which had “effects that were practically miracles.” Early modern pharmaceutical networks thus proceeded from a specific form of information asymmetry. Portuguese trade in both tropical drugs and in human beings highlights how material networks of global exchange shaped Enlightenment thought.
Editora Prismas, 2017
The environmental history of the Atlantic world also helps us understand two of the most colossal... more The environmental history of the Atlantic world also helps us understand two of the most colossal catastrophes of recent human history. The first is the unfathomable tragedy occasioned by the deaths of tens of millions of indigenous Americans due to "virgin soil" epidemic diseases like influenza, measles, and smallpox. The second is an ongoing decline in global biodiversity, which many ecologists now identify as the greatest mass extinction since the demise of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. By linking colonial-era historical scholarship to issues of contemporary concern regarding both the survival of non-Western cultures and the preservation of the earth's remaining biodiversity, the study of the Columbian Exchange has emerged as one of the most dynamic historical subfields. The goal of this chapter is to highlight the broad array of interests and methods currently converging on the environmental history of the Atlantic world.
A história ambiental do mundo atlântico ajuda a compreender duas das mais colossais catástrofes da história humana recente. A primeira é a impenetrável tragédia ocasionada pelas mortes de dezenas de milhões de nativos americanos devido a doenças infeciosas como a gripe, o sarampo e a varíola, contra as quais os indígenas não possuíam resistência. A segunda é a contínua diminuição da biodiversidade global, a qual muitos ecologias identificam agora como a maior extinção em massa desde o desaparecimento dos dinossauros há 65 milhões de anos. Ao conectar os estudos acerca da história do período colonial a preocupações contemporâneas a respeito tanto da sobrevivência de culturas não-ocidentais quanto da preservação da biodiversidade restante no planeta, o estudo do intercâmbio colombiano emergiu como uma das mais dinâmicas subáreas da historiografia. O objetivo deste capítulo é destacar a ampla gama de interesses e métodos que convergem atualmente na história ambiental do mundo atlântico.
For centuries, medicinal and recreational drugs have evoked both utopian visions and darker theme... more For centuries, medicinal and recreational drugs have evoked both utopian visions and darker themes: slavish obsession, physical dependency , altered mental states, and the feedback loop of labor and consumption. This article surveys recent work on the history of drugs from the 15th through 19th centuries, arguing that these works collectively demonstrate the importance of drugs and the drug trade in how we think about larger topics such as imperialism, globalization, modernization of commercial and political regimes, and the relationship between the individual and the marketplace. The search for new drugs—and, with them, new varieties of mental and physical experience—was not just a preoccupation of many early modern individuals. It was, arguably, a defining feature of early modernity itself.
Working paper circulated at the "Trading Medicines" workshop at the London School of Economics in... more Working paper circulated at the "Trading Medicines" workshop at the London School of Economics in December of 2013.
Fundamental features of the early modern Atlanticlike the slave trade, the rise of experimental s... more Fundamental features of the early modern Atlanticlike the slave trade, the rise of experimental science and long-distance commerce, and the proliferation of religious confessionswere transnational in character. This essay surveys recent work in the field, emphasizing emerging scholarship on the hybrid nature of the Atlantic world. Yet for hybridity to work as a useful analytical category, we need to do away with the narrative of "Northwestern Europeanization" as the normative model. We explore how ecology and place, science and medicine, and diasporic or extra-national groups like smugglers, Jews, and slaves helped create an Atlantic that was defined more by its cross-cultural encounters, local contexts, and mixed identities than by the power of European states.
Historians have long overlooked the role played by domesticated animals in the European expansion... more Historians have long overlooked the role played by domesticated animals in the European expansion into the Americas. Yet domesticated animals -and the social practices that accompanied them -were central both to the 'civilizing mission' of colonizers and to indigenous American resistance. This paper examines these themes within the context of the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi region between 1670 and 1730. Drawing evidence from Algonquian and Iroquoian languages and cultural practices as well as from the accounts of French missionaries and voyageurs, I show that the indigenous peoples of the Pays d'en Haut rejected the positive connotations that domestication held for Europeans, and instead equated domestication with enslavement. The resulting conflicts between conceptions of nature, ownership and tameness had an enduring influence on European-Indian relations. Although this study examines specific patterns of interaction on the New French frontier, it also raises broad questions relating to environmental history and European-indigenous interactions throughout the New World.
Journal of Early Modern History, Jul 1, 2013
The 1600-1800 period was an era of global travel and encounters. Yet this "early modern globaliza... more The 1600-1800 period was an era of global travel and encounters. Yet this "early modern globalization" was highly unstable, characterized by miscommunications and doubts regarding the credibility of both individual witnesses and the facts they adduced. The Formosan hoax of George Psalmanazar (1679?-1763) offers a unique perspective on these themes. Although Psalmanazar was a fraud, his inventions about the island of Formosa circulated widely in different languages, nations, and inscriptive contexts. The divergence between Psalmanazar's personal credibility and the longevity of his invented facts sheds light on the nature of evidence and information networks in early modern globalization. This episode highlights the imperfect and contested nature of early modern communication networks.
The Appendix, Apr 5, 2014
Conference Presentations by Benjamin Breen
Blog Posts by Benjamin Breen
Book Reviews by Benjamin Breen
The Archives of Natural History, Apr 2013
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Books by Benjamin Breen
Papers by Benjamin Breen
A história ambiental do mundo atlântico ajuda a compreender duas das mais colossais catástrofes da história humana recente. A primeira é a impenetrável tragédia ocasionada pelas mortes de dezenas de milhões de nativos americanos devido a doenças infeciosas como a gripe, o sarampo e a varíola, contra as quais os indígenas não possuíam resistência. A segunda é a contínua diminuição da biodiversidade global, a qual muitos ecologias identificam agora como a maior extinção em massa desde o desaparecimento dos dinossauros há 65 milhões de anos. Ao conectar os estudos acerca da história do período colonial a preocupações contemporâneas a respeito tanto da sobrevivência de culturas não-ocidentais quanto da preservação da biodiversidade restante no planeta, o estudo do intercâmbio colombiano emergiu como uma das mais dinâmicas subáreas da historiografia. O objetivo deste capítulo é destacar a ampla gama de interesses e métodos que convergem atualmente na história ambiental do mundo atlântico.
Conference Presentations by Benjamin Breen
Blog Posts by Benjamin Breen
Book Reviews by Benjamin Breen
A história ambiental do mundo atlântico ajuda a compreender duas das mais colossais catástrofes da história humana recente. A primeira é a impenetrável tragédia ocasionada pelas mortes de dezenas de milhões de nativos americanos devido a doenças infeciosas como a gripe, o sarampo e a varíola, contra as quais os indígenas não possuíam resistência. A segunda é a contínua diminuição da biodiversidade global, a qual muitos ecologias identificam agora como a maior extinção em massa desde o desaparecimento dos dinossauros há 65 milhões de anos. Ao conectar os estudos acerca da história do período colonial a preocupações contemporâneas a respeito tanto da sobrevivência de culturas não-ocidentais quanto da preservação da biodiversidade restante no planeta, o estudo do intercâmbio colombiano emergiu como uma das mais dinâmicas subáreas da historiografia. O objetivo deste capítulo é destacar a ampla gama de interesses e métodos que convergem atualmente na história ambiental do mundo atlântico.