| Over the course of the early modern period, a new mode of investigating the natural world came into being: one focused on precisely documenting the local plants, minerals, and animals of early modern Europe. This interest was actually directed not so much towards the "local" per se (a term of more modern origin), but rather towards the "indigenous" or einheimisch, as revealed in nature. The dissertation explores the origins of this interest in, and attention to, "indigenous" nature. Examining local floras and related works written in the Holy Roman Empire from 1580 to 1720, and drawing on a variety of manuscript sources, the dissertation attempts to explain how these works came to be written; and what they reveal about early modern Germans' understandings of their own natural environments.;The dissertation engages with several key debates in the history of early modern Europe. First, by joining political, social, and cultural history to illuminate the emergence of local natural history at this time, it shows how concepts of "indigenous" nature were shaped by changing ideas of place and territory in the Germanies. In particular, it argues that new impulses towards the study of local nature did not arise solely out of localism, but rather amidst the broader international context of polemics surrounding the influx of "exotic" or auslandisch substances from new continents. Secondly, the dissertation draws on recent work in environmental history to provide new insight into how preindustrial European landscapes were perceived. The writing of local floras and similar works reflected a crucial shift in attitudes towards the German countryside, as new kinds of "natural riches" were perceived in natural objects, and new kinds of value assigned to them.;The dissertation's chapters chart various episodes in this story. The first chapter, for example, traces the conceptual origins of the medical debates over the "indigenous" and the "exotic" in the 16th century, culminating in the production of treatises on "indigenous medicine" in the 17th. The second chapter focuses on the example of the university town of Altdorf to show the origins of the local flora in the practices of the botanical field trip. The third chapter turns its attention to the phenomenon of the local oryktographia, or mineralogical description, a genre which gained increasing popularity in the 1650s and 1660s and which modeled itself directly on the local flora. Exploring the correspondence of several authors of these works, this chapter shows how naturalists came to establish themselves as specialists in the natural objects of their own territories. The fourth chapter discusses the career of an alternative model of local natural history set forth by J. J. Scheuchzer in the early years of the 18th century, one aiming to capture the full "natural history" of entire territories. Finally, the fifth chapter attempts to draw out the broader issues surrounding the attempts of early modern naturalists to standardize, and to universalize, their local natural worlds. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
