Subject matter : technology, the body, and science on the Anglo-American frontier, 1500-1676 / Joyce E. Chaplin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chaplin, Joyce E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Frontier and pioneer life--North America.

Frontier and pioneer life.

Colonists--North America--Attitudes.

Colonists.

Indians of North America--First contact with other peoples.

Indians of North America.

Imperialism--Social aspects--North America--History.

Imperialism.

Human body--Social aspects--North America--History.

Human body.

Science--Social aspects--North America--History.

Science.

Technology--Social aspects--North America--History.

Technology.

North America--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

North America.

Great Britain--Colonies--America--Social conditions.

Great Britain.

North America--Race relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (432 p. ) ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This work alters the historical view of the origins of English presumptions of racial superiority, and of the role science and technology played.

With this sweeping reinterpretation of early cultural encounters between the English and American natives, Joyce E. Chaplin thoroughly alters our historical view of the origins of English presumptions of racial superiority, and of the role science and technology played in shaping these notions. By placing the history of science and medicine at the very center of the story of early English colonization, Chaplin shows how contemporary European theories of nature and science dramatically influenced relations between the English and Indians within the formation of the British Empire. In Chaplin's account of the earliest contacts, we find the English--impressed by the Indians' way with food, tools, and iron--inclined to consider Indians as partners in the conquest and control of nature. Only when it came to the Indians' bodies, so susceptible to disease, were the English confident in their superiority. Chaplin traces the way in which this tentative notion of racial inferiority hardened and expanded to include the Indians' once admirable mental and technical capacities. Here we see how the English, beginning from a sense of bodily superiority, moved little by little toward the idea of their mastery over nature, America, and the Indians--and how this progression is inextricably linked to the impetus and rationale for empire.

Contents:

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgment Prologue: Noses, or the Tip of the Problem PART I: Approaching America, 1500-1585 1. Transatlantic Background 2. Technology versus Idolatry? PART II: Invading America, 1585-1660 3. No Magic Bullets: Archery, Ethnography, and Military Intelligence 4. Domesticating America 5. Death and the Birth of Race PART III: Conquering America, 1640-1676 6. How Improvement Trumped Hybridity 7. Gender and the Artificial Indian Body 8. Matter and Manitou Coda Notes Index

Notes:

Originally published: 2001.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [329]-389) and index.

ISBN:

9780674262614

0674262611

9780674029439

0674029437

OCLC:

923109362