Discriminating Evidence

Closeness and Distance in Natural and Civil Histories of the Caribbean

Bibliographic Data

ID12740554
AuthorsMiles Ogborn (0000-0002-0322-3416, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume11
Issue3
Pages631-653
Publication date2014-10-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Intellectual History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1479-2443 • E-ISSN: 1479-2451
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1479244314000225
OpenAlexW2312931417
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited29

Enlightenment ideas of the “the Great Map of Mankind” established relationships between historical and geographical distance which provided the problematic for eighteenth-century natural and civil histories. This raised issues of evidence for writing such histories that were particularly acute in the Caribbean, where natural history was—via the movement and transplantation of plants, animals and peoples—always a matter of “civil” history; and where the question of what (or who) was “civil” (or civilized) was addressed via discussions of the boundary between humanity and nature. It is shown that how these questions were asked provoked the use of an array of evidence that varied in its management of the relationships of proximity and distance: including travellers’ tales, eyewitness observations, classical authors and philosophical speculation. The epistemological disjunctures that this evidence brought with it meant that the questions that were opened up could not be closed down

Aesthetics · Age of Enlightenment · Archaeology · Boundary (topology · Closeness · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Genealogy · Geography · Humanity · Natural (archaeology · Natural history · Political science · Speculation · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Ecology

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