Social Networks and the Circulation of Technology and Knowledge in the Global Spanish Empire
This chapter attempts to explain the role of social networks and political institutions in the diffusion of technology and scientific knowledge in the Spanish Empire during the early modern era. It does so by revisiting different stereotypes raised in the
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ossible to think of a global empire where there is not a substantial circulation of technology and technological knowledge? Can we imagine the sixteenth and seventeenth-century scientific revolution without the circulation of knowledge and objects which made it possible and without the most important space for such circulation? This is what Masson de Morvillers did when, referring to scientific development in a famous This work has been carried out within the framework of the activities of the research group ‘Globalización Ibérica: Redes entre Asia y Europa y los cambios en las pautas de consumo en Latinoamerica. HAR2014-53797-P’, as well as of GECEM (‘Global Encounters between China and Europe: Trade Networks, Consumption and Cultural Exchanges in Macau and Marseille, 1680–1840’) project hosted by the Pablo de Olavide University, UPO (Seville, Spain). The GECEM project is funded by the ERC (European Research Council)-Starting Grant, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, ref. 679371, www.gecem.eu. The P.I. (Principal Investigator) is Professor Manuel Perez Garcia (Distinguished Researcher at UPO). B. Yun-Casalilla (*) Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain © The Author(s) 2018 M. Perez Garcia and L. de Sousa (eds.), Global History and New Polycentric Approaches, Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4053-5_13
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article in L’Encyclopédie Méthodique, he wrote ‘in two centuries, in four, or even in six, what has Spain done for Europe?’ Spain, he added, is a country where it is necessary ‘to ask priests for permission to read and think’ (Masson de Movillers 1782: 575). This chapter aims at drawing attention to the role of the Spanish Empire in the circulation of technology and technological knowledge during this epoch. It focuses on the role of informal institutions and social networks regulating such circulation and examines the relationship between political power and the control of technological knowledge, as well as the often-simplified interplay between globalization and empire.
1 Iberia and the Empire: Channels of Knowledge A new image of the technological development in the Spanish Golden Age has emerged since 1988, when David Goodman published his influential Power and Penury (Goodman 1988). This book made clear the interest of Philip II (1527–1598) in mining technology, metallurgy, navigation, mathematics, medicine and many other sciences. Goodman’s research aimed at defending the image of the king as a patron of science and technological development. But the book also wanted to change the stereotype of the ‘Castilians as uninterested in technology and science’ (Goodman 1988: 264). Three decades of further research has corroborated the idea of significant scientific development in Spain and has also stressed the importance of fields not directly linked to the king’s action. In an attack against the traditional view, Eamon (2009) has summarized this new view and has shown the Black Legend’s Preju
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