Global History of Knowledge in the Early Modern World : Sources from 1500-1800

Offering a fresh, global approach to the history of knowledge, this book brings together a collection of annotated primary sources, many newly translated and rarely accessible, from across the Early Modern World. Covering the period from roughly 1500 to 1800, this multi-perspective volume reveals how ideas, practices, and beliefs travelled across vast distances—by ship, on foot, in letters, images, and objects—and how they were reshaped in the process.

Organised into three thematic sections, A Global History of Knowledge includes case studies ranging from missionary navigation in colonial Chile to portable sundials in European households, the transfer of Indigenous knowledge from Latin America to the European Republic of Letters, and the flow of Jesuit ideas between Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Each chapter centres on a compelling source—many never before available in English—that opens a window into how knowledge was created, shared, and transformed in a world marked by mobility, encounter, and exchange. This book invites readers to explore how knowledge moved, not just across continents, but between cultures, disciplines and worldviews, and why that movement still matters today.