Author: Katie Kania

Christopher M. Parsons is a historian of science, medicine, and the environment in the early modern Atlantic world with a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. His current research explores the spread of European illnesses in New France, New England, and New Netherland in the 1630s “in order to understand how epidemic disease shaped colonial encounters and imperial rivalries,” (https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/christopher-parsons/). In addition, he teaches courses at Northwestern University as an Associate Professor of History. His 2018 book, A Not-So-New-World: Empire and Environment in French Colonial North America won the Prix Lionel-Groulx award from the Institut d’Historie de l’Amerique Francaise and an honorable mention for the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society. This book traces his “longstanding interest in highlighting the contribution of indigenous peoples to the evolution of European and Euro-American environmental sciences,” (https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/christopher-parsons/).

A Not-So-New World: Empire and Environment in French Colonial North America, is an in-depth exploration of France’s colonial aspirations that used ecological cultivation to assert dominance in the “new world.” Parsons places his book among the historiography of French colonial naturalism but asserts that unlike other scholars, this book demonstrates that the flora of the new world was not so unfamiliar to colonists as has been studied before. He says that instead of the novelty of North America posing “a significant challenge to European intellectual traditions,” the “strangely familiar” similarities between the flora and fauna of the old world and the new sparked a different kind of novelty. A novelty which spurred colonials to understand the differences between them and claim the land as a “New France,” which they were divinely authorized to cultivate and civilize in the shape of the old world. American flora, while familiar, was just distinct enough from their European counterparts that they were deemed “sauvage,” and in need of European cultivation. The drive to understand American flora intertwined indigenous knowledge into French settlements, with colonists attempting to “civilize” and “cultivate” native plants, and subsequently the native peoples, to make them more distinctly “French.”

I appreciated that the first chapter of this book was dedicated to understanding the broader ecological and geological histories of the earth. By describing plate tectonics and the genetic links between plants on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the author ties a science lesson about plant genetics into an explanation of why French explorers and colonists would find the plants of the new world so familiar to the ones they left behind in France. This sets the stage for subsequent chapters to explore why the colonists felt the new world plants were “sauvage,” and their desire to intervene in the social, political, and spiritual lives of the indigenous people who lived there through the cultivation of native flora. Chapter two defines the terms “sauvage,” and “cultivation,” in the context of communicating the observable world to contemporaries in Europe. As Parsons explains, it was how information about “New France was communicated to French audiences [that] made cultivation a central mode for understanding the colony,” (11). One of the strengths of A Not-So-New-World is that each chapter builds upon the concepts of the last. From the definitions of savagery and cultivation of chapter two comes chapter three, which dedicates time to following the missionaries “who sought to intervene in the ecological lives of indigenous people in order to reform their spiritual lives,” (12). The ideas of American flora being savage, and the French duty to cultivate the natural world, are central themes throughout the book which bring focus to the argument that French colonists used the natural world to cement French colonial presence in North America.

Chapters four, five and six focus on the empirical side of natural history, as well as the intellectual exchanges of knowledge that occurred across the Atlantic. Chapter four discusses the results of French experiments cultivating American flora that ultimately failed to achieve the reshaping of the natural world in northeastern North America. It was at this point in these experiments that French colonists began to doubt that colonialism could “reshape ecosystems and climates,” which in turn meant that they had failed in their goal of establishing a New France that mimicked the old (12). In chapter five, Parsons enters the court of Louis XIV as the Royal Academy of Sciences is established. The author argues that the Royal Academy not only facilitated the exchange of knowledge between the colonists and their counterparts in France but enhanced the exchanges of knowledge between colonists and indigenous groups in America that had attempted to take place at the beginning of France’s attempt at colonial settlement and initially failed. This new outlet for scientific conversation shifted attitudes away from the idea of “cultivating” New France as a means of colonization. Parsons concludes his book with a case study in chapter six about the discovery of American ginseng, a plant initially “discovered” in Asia. This case study is significant for a few reasons. First, it is an example of how the question of “whether New France was essentially familiar or an entirely new and foreign continent,” was debated among the intellectuals of the time. Second, it highlights indigenous knowledge in assisting Jesuit missionaries find and identify new types of ginseng. Thirdly, it discusses contemporary debates about ethnographic and cultural “continuities between the old world and the new,” since ginseng had then appeared on different continents. This case study is a culmination of the author’s arguments throughout the book by highlighting different aspects of French colonialism that were used, debated and experimented in North America.

The focused nature of the book suggests it was written for scholars of colonial North America, but it is written in a way that would be familiar to a broader audience. The concepts present in the book are explained thoroughly and concisely so that readers who are unfamiliar with French colonialism would find it easy to understand and analyze. In addition, Parsons includes a few visual aids in the form of maps and botanical illustrations to emphasize points. Considering that this book focuses on natural history in colonial North America, I would have thought that there would have been more scientific illustrations present, but that all depends on the availability of surviving sources. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and honestly cannot find much that I disliked about it. Overall, A Not-So-New World was an interesting new perspective on French colonialism in North America with its focus on ecological cultivation that spurred colonial ideologies, new scientific experiments, and exchanges of knowledge in an attempt to reshape a seemingly familiar landscape into one distinctly French.

John M. Dixon is an historian of early America and of the early modern Atlantic world who teaches at the College of Staten Island, CUNY. He received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2007 and regularly teaches courses on the history of America before 1865, the history of New York, and American thought and culture. In addition, his research interests include intellectual and cultural history, the Enlightenment, New York history, and American Jewish history. His current research explores the early modern Atlantic world through the Jewish experience and his forthcoming project is funded by the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish history at New York University. The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden, published in 2016, is his latest book which follows the political and intellectual life of eighteenth-century statesman Cadwallader Colden in British colonial New York.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden traces the larger picture of British America’s intellectual circles by following the social, political, and intellectual life and career of the aforementioned statesman and man of science. This book argues that colonial American intellectualism in the age of Enlightenment was not a revolutionary detachment from Europe, but a dynamic transatlantic exchange of ideas in which loyalist elites with “metropolitan connections,” like Colden, served as intermediaries between local colonial knowledge and that of European scientific institutions and patrons. It is unique in the historiography of intellectualism in pre-revolutionary colonial America because it focuses on the intellectuals that were imperialist, elitist, and royalist. The author argues that this side of pre-revolutionary American history is important because, even though it does not “fit comfortably into our standard historical narrative of early America,” it was an important piece of “early modern intellectual culture,” (8). The Enlightenment in British America, then, was shaped by the interaction of “European, African, native, scholarly and artisanal knowledge that occurred,” because of the imperialist concerns of elite men in the colonies (3).

The book is divided chronologically into three parts, detailing Colden’s life through his intellectual pursuits. Part one of this book describes Colden’s early life, education, and his first years in the American colonies. It begins with an overview of the tumultuous years of the Glorious Revolution which gave way to great intellectual and political change, that Dixon describes as never being far apart. In Scotland, despite sectarian religious violence that saw faculty expulsed from the University of Edinburgh, where Colden would study, reforms were made to modernize Scottish education which included the implementation of many new courses such as language, botany, natural philosophy, and public law. It was during these tumultuous years in which Colden was raised and studied. His pursuits at the University of Edinburgh were in line with Enlightenment thought and he developed an interest in natural science and philosophy, with exposure to Newtonianism, and began to cultivate a reputable position in society. The biography continues with Colden’s personal and intellectual pursuits by describing his early years in colonial America, establishing contacts and himself as a reputable doctor and gentleman. The author uses this portion of the book to emphasize the burgeoning transatlantic exchange of knowledge and intellectual pursuits of which Colden took part. This portion of the book concludes with Colden’s marriage, his solidification as a learned physician, and his move from Philadelphia to New York where he was appointed New York’s Surveyor General by Governor Hunter through their connection in the same intellectual circles.

Part two of The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden, follows Colden’s early political career in the colonies with an emphasis on his first major written work The History of the Five Indian Nations. After British America gained the rights to trade with Native American populations in the continental interior after the War of Spanish Succession, there was a push to expand and redirect economic efforts to the west. Political conflicts hindered this expansion and there was an increased effort to gain “credible geographic and historical knowledge of the continent,” (63). Colden saw this as a new opportunity to become an expert on the geography and history of North America. Dixon argues that cartography played a crucial role in the imperialist visions of North America that colonial leaders desired and which the British government in London was unconvinced of in the 1720s. The author argues here that New York’s proximity to the Iroquois, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples gave the colony imperial significance. Colden’s “The History of the Five Indian Nations,” gave him scholarly credibility and standing as a leading expert on the geography of North America on both sides of the Atlantic. It was an outwardly political tract which asserted that Britain had economic dominance over these territories to trade and settle and was published internationally.

In addition, Dixon spends time with Colden’s retreat into being a “gentleman at leisure,” following the political turmoil of the 1730s and 40s in New York. He spent his time here pursuing scientific and philosophic endeavors for the benefit of the public and engaged the help of his family, servants, and enslaved persons. Colden also participated in transatlantic scientific correspondence networks and utilized an increasingly powerful print culture to distribute knowledge. It was during this time he penned, “The Principles of Action in Matter,” where he claimed that the universe was made of “self-moving material,” (104). The publication of this work did not catapult him to the success he wanted and was largely discredited. Colden blamed this failure on European prejudice against colonial intellectualism. Dixon argues that the failure was on a lack of clarity in Colden’s theory and the practical inability to quickly respond to criticisms in Europe across the Atlantic. Despite this failure, Dixon claims that Colden’s intellectual contributions helped propel the transatlantic culture of knowledge exchange between the colonies and Europe.

Part three tackles Colden’s later life as the lieutenant governor of New York amid the increasingly political (and revolutionary) backdrop of the British American colonies. His appointment coincided with George III’s succession to the throne and put him in a vulnerable position in a higher office amid an unstable political scene in New York. At the same time, younger educated professionals overshadowed his “intellectual authority,” and “decades of intellectual and political struggles,” had worn him down (7). Fractious parties and political alignments led to “social disunity” and “corruption, conspiracy, and anarchy,” in the 1750s and 1760s (129). At this point, Dixon argues, Cadwallader Colden became disillusioned, and his vision of an enlightened government was fading. By the time of the Stamp Act of 1765, Colden was a universally disliked lieutenant governor with defamatory tracts being distributed broadly. The author argues here that despite his “universal dislike,” and poor historical reputation, that Cadwallader Colden was an important figure in transatlantic Enlightenment thinking, who championed colonial intellectualism. In this manner, Dixon’s book is most similar in the historiography of transatlantic knowledge exchange to books like Delbourgo’s “Collecting the World,” or Woodward’s “Prospero’s America,” though Cadwallader Colden’s actual scientific achievements compared to the likes of Hans Sloane, for example, leave something to be desired.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden is written in an accessible manner, with the intent being that anyone with interest in British colonial intellectualism and the Enlightenment could understand the author’s argument. A caveat, however, is that Dixon writes on the assumption that the reader is familiar with broader scientific and historic concepts. Though overviews of major events and theories are given, these explanations fall short of being helpful to those who don’t have that background of knowledge. John Dixon’s research is thorough, with archival evidence from the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, the National Records of Scotland, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Colby College Museum of Art to name a few. For readers, the book lacks pictorial evidence that could contribute to the author’s argument, and which would make it more accessible to a non-scholar audience. Dixon cites many pieces of correspondence and Colden’s own published work which survive in archives but does not include visual representations of the evidence that he uses in his argument. These issues, however, are small and may be a reflection of a personal preference on my part. Overall, this is a thoroughly well-researched and well-written book arguing the importance of British colonial intellectual achievement during the Enlightenment.

Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England by Elaine Leong is a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of early modern knowledge transfer in the household. Elaine Leong received her Ph.D. in Modern History from the University of Oxford in 2006 and has completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Warwick and the University of Cambridge. Her research is focused on early modern medical and scientific knowledge transfer and production, with a focus on gender, the everyday, and the domestic sphere. She lectures at University College London with courses on health and the body in the early modern era, and sex, gender, and the body in early modern England. In addition, she is a current visiting scholar at the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science in Berlin where she led a research group on the nature of reading and writing in early modern Europe. She has also co-edited two articles on medicine, science, and drug testing from the renaissance through the early modern era with Alisha Rankin, author of The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiments, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science. Published in 2018, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is her first book and encompasses her research passions by focusing on “knowledge practices in early modern English households,” (https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/users/eleong).

Recipes and Everyday Knowledge explores the early modern household as a space for exploring and investigating the natural world in addition to serving as intellectual hubs that facilitated the exchange of knowledge in social networks via the exchange and experimentation of recipes. The household is defined by the author as a site of “knowledge production and as a collective of knowledge producers,” (9). By doing so, Elaine Leong asserts that the act of collecting, recording, and testing recipes in early modern households set the framework for “empirical and experiential” knowledge making (6-7). In addition, Leong analyzes the role of both men and women in the early modern family unit as contributing to knowledge creation in the household through the collection of recipes. By doing this, Leong examines early modern gender roles by placing women in the sphere of scientific intellectual activity and men as collaborators in household and familial management.

The book is meticulously organized through case studies on a number of English households by examining manuscript and printed recipe collections of the seventeenth century. This format is important because “recipe books… were malleable texts open to correction and extension,” thereby offering the reader a glimpse of “science in the making” akin to “modern laboratory notebooks or ‘research notebooks,’” (13-14). Through the included examples of recipe collection and testing, readers can see the processes of scientific experimentation in relation to the health and everyday knowledge of early modern families. Leong claims that recent research on early modern English recipe collection favors the female perspective by examining women’s manuscript writings and medical practices (10). She argues that her focus on the collaborative nature of household management and affairs extends this research by looking across gender and class relations in households to provide a comprehensive depiction of these “complex social relationships,” (10). In general, the structure of the book is very traditional and scholarly, including introductions and conclusions to each chapter with supporting information sandwiched in between. In this way, the format of the book is geared toward other scholars and historians of the early modern period. However, the language is accessible to a wider audience and the material is incredibly interesting, which is enough motivation for anyone who wants to learn more about recipe collection in early modern England.

Leong’s archival research into recipe collections between 1600 and 1700 turned up nearly 400 examples of manuscript and printed recipe books that formed the backbone of this work. I appreciated her explanation of the way her research was geographically and chronologically limited to seventeenth century England through the documents in the household recipe archive that she explored. In addition, the survival of these collections also depended on who created them, which the author states were mostly wealthy landowners, members of Parliament, and other minor-gentry (14). As Leong notes though, this focus provides a unique and concentrated snapshot of upper-class English families who participated in the making and exchange of scientific knowledge.

Recipes and Everyday Knowledge begins with an overview of recipe collection, social networks, and the place of food and medicine within this culture. Chapter one explores recipe collection through expanding social networks and the collaborative, multi-generational work that these collections demonstrate. Not only did it facilitate the sharing of knowledge within a family, but within a wider circle of friends and acquaintances where new knowledge was disseminated. Chapter two discusses the complex maintenance of the “health” of a household. Here, the author discusses the “science” behind the management, large-scale planning, and organization of a household where hands-on knowledge and trials (such as the testing of medicinal and food related recipes) were crucial to the successful running of an estate.

Chapters three and four focus on the verification of recipes through codification and extensive experimentation and modification of newly acquired knowledge. Before the household accepted a recipe as a part of its “daily practice,” members of the household spent considerable time and effort testing recipes, questioning methods, and trying new techniques. As Leong states, these procedures demonstrate that “householders or recipe compilers,” were “continually engaged in critiquing and rewriting recipes,” rather than being “passive recipients of stagnant knowledge,” (97). Through these chapters, elements of the empirical side of the “scientific revolution” are discussed. The content and argument of these chapters are similar to Leong’s colleague Alisha Rankin in her 2021 book Poison Trials. In Poison Trials, Rankin goes into detail about the types of experiments and testing used to determine if antidotes for certain poisons would be effective in Renaissance science. In Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, Leong discusses the ways in which households would categorize recipes into those of interest, those tested, and those accepted as cures. And in the process of testing, to observe the effects of certain remedies on the human body and adjust production methods until it had been perfected. Both authors discuss the methodology behind testing and experimenting with new scientific knowledge in the form of remedies and medications between the renaissance and early modern periods. This is a significant similarity because it provides a space to discuss the formation of scientific methods in what we refer to as the “scientific revolution.”

Finally, chapters five and six are centered around public knowledge and family history. Chapter five discusses recipe books as a form of recording family history that was then passed down through generations. The author includes a case study where a woman in the 1930s found and opened a chest full of her family’s ancestral documents from the early modern period that contained papers such as land deeds and other legal documents, and which also included a few volumes of recipe books. Leong’s argument here is that recipes collections had value placed on them as historical records of the household that served as “archives” of family history. In chapter six, the legacy of knowledge and what kinds of knowledge were transferred to the public in printed recipes is discussed. In essence, the last two chapters are an exploration of the legacies of recipe collections in transferring new knowledge in the private and public spheres. Overall, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England is an engaging and thoroughly researched work on the transfer and testing of new knowledge via recipe collection in the early modern era.

Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane by James Delbourgo is an honest look at natural history collection in the early modern period by examining Hans Sloane’s collections that led to the foundation of the British Museum. James Delbourgo is an English historian of science and the early modern Atlantic world with a focus on the history of collection and museums. He earned his Master’s in Philosophy from Cambridge in 1997 and his Ph.D. from Columbia in 2003. Since 2008, Delbourgo has been a professor at Rutgers University teaching undergraduate courses on the history of science and the Enlightenment. Collecting the World is Delbourgo’s most recent book, published in 2017, and is based on “15 years of research in Sloane’s surviving London collections in collaboration with the British Museum,” (https://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/307-delbourgo-james). Though based in New York City, Delbourgo is a consultant to the British Museum where he works to present “the historic links between Sloane and his collections to slavery, the African diaspora and the British Empire for the general public,” (https://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/307-delbourgo-james). Collecting the World emphasizes this facet of the early modern world by highlighting the contributions of the enslaved and indigenous populations of the Caribbean who were instrumental in Sloane’s process of collecting natural history specimen which became the bulk of the British Museum’s collections at its founding in 1753.

Collecting the World follows the life and career of Hans Sloane, a man of science whose childhood in Ulster in the ruling Protestant minority of the majority Irish Catholic population influenced his positive view of colonization in the burgeoning British Empire. These experiences shaped how Sloane viewed the world and influenced the process by which he collected natural items to categorize and publish in his work the Natural History of Jamaica as an adult. James Delbourgo argues that Sloane’s career in the pursuit of science and knowledge in the early modern period, (and by extension his wealth, fame, and the origins of the modern museum) were built on the rapid commercial and colonial expansion of the British Empire that profited from the Atlantic slave trade. Delbourgo supplements this argument through his extensive archival research into Sloane’s collections housed at the British Museum which include his published work, manuscripts, correspondence and the surviving specimens and objects and their respective catalogues (xxix).

Though it is written in a manner more familiar to those who have a background in scholarly literature, this book is accessible to anyone who wishes to learn more about the origins of the modern public museum and the world of collecting. It contains copious images of sketches, etchings, and photographs of the surviving items in Sloane’s collection at the British Museum to visually aid the reader. In addition, this book is a clearly written and concise depiction of the life of Hans Sloane and the impact of colonization, trade and the global exchange of ideas that influenced his career. It makes compelling and straightforward arguments about Sloane’s role in the foundation of the modern museum and his role in profiting from the exploitation of enslaved labor and colonial expansion. What this book accomplishes is acknowledging Hans Sloane and his contributions to early modern science but removes him from a pedestal so that the reader understands how these contributions were achieved and the impacts of the global system from which they were forged.

Within the historiography of early modern science and the “scientific revolution,” this book sets itself apart since Hans Sloane, the author argues, has been a long neglected scientific figure due to the complexity and difficulty of his story. Delbourgo claims that in popular history there is an emphasis on the “physical” sciences of figures like Isaac Newton, while “social” forms of science like Sloane’s were overshadowed by more popular contemporary figures like Carolus Linnaeus. In addition, there is a complexity to this history since he was a collector of natural history specimens that profited from the “disturbing world of Atlantic slavery… [which] has proven a far harder story to tell,” (xxiii). And previously there were physical limitations to the study of Hans Sloane. His collections were divided up, some portions destroyed, and others left to rot. In Collecting the World, James Delbourgo attempted, for the first time, to examine Sloane’s complicated life through surviving artifacts and published works.

To map Hans Sloane’s life, Delbourgo divided Collecting the World into two distinct parts. The first part of the book, chapters one through three, look at his colonial origins in Ireland, his education in continental Europe, and his travels to the Caribbean. And the second part, chapters four through seven, focuses on his life in London after his travels, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, as he established himself as a physician and a collector. Chapter one is a study of Sloane’s early life in Ulster, much of the area we now know as Northern Ireland, and the Protestant/Catholic tensions that he faced as a child in a colonized area of the British Empire. Delbourgo argues that growing up in an area familiar with colonization impacted how Sloane viewed the expansion of the British Empire across the Atlantic and impacted his work as a collector and how he viewed the scientific world. Chapters two and three are arguably the most important chapters of the book. They provide a detailed description of British colonial expansion and the Atlantic slave trade and Sloane’s encounters with the institution during his time in Jamaica. These years greatly influenced how and what he collected, including his exploitation of enslaved labor to collect natural history specimens. These included local flora, fauna, and the tools and musical instruments of the indigenous and enslaved populations of the island. These chapters are supplemented with sketches from his travels, illustrations and maps to detail the intricacies of the early modern Atlantic world.

Chapter four details his professional establishment as a physician in London, his marriage, and the process of the publication of the Natural History of Jamaica, which compiled his collections on paper. Here, Sloane found himself in the middle of Britain’s “growing empire of goods,” which allowed for social mobility in a society of unequal wealth (147). Chapter five details Sloane’s continued interest in collecting, with the author describing him as a “collector of collections.” This chapter is a detailed look at the scientific world of early modern Europe and the exchange of knowledge that occurred internationally. Chapters six and seven are a description of the culmination of Sloane’s efforts of collection. They detail the organization, cataloguing and labelling efforts of his personal museum and the subsequent foundation of the British Museum from stipulations that he drew up in his will. From start to finish this book argues that Hans Sloane’s status in the scientific world, and the origins of the modern museum, were built on the rapid expansion of the British Empire through the Atlantic slave trade and the vast exchange of scientific knowledge across Europe in the early modern period. Overall, Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane is a detailed and well-researched book which thoroughly examines the complexities of the early modern world with very little, if anything, to criticize.

Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late-Sixteenth Century Rome by Pamela O. Long is an interesting and informative look at the politics and intellectual advancements during the redesign of Rome between the years 1557 and 1590. Pamela O. Long received her Ph.D. in Renaissance and Reformation History from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1979. She describes herself as an independent historian of late medieval and early modern Europe and the history of science and technology.  In addition to research, Long has been a visiting professor at institutions such as the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, Princeton University, and Harvard University. She has taught courses on the history of medieval and renaissance Europe, the “scientific revolution”, and technology in medieval and renaissance Europe. Engineering the Eternal City, published in 2018, is Long’s latest in a repertoire that includes authoring and co-authoring five other books on technology and science from the medieval to early modern periods. For example, her 2011 book, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400-1600 analyzes the influence of artisans and craftsmen on the “new sciences” of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/artisanpractitioners-and-rise-of-new-sciences-1400-1600).

Engineering the Eternal City focuses on a thirty-year period of redesign and rebuilding of Rome between the aftermath of the great flood of 1557 and the death of pope Sixtus V in 1590. The author argues that despite Rome’s reputation as a “backwater for the sciences,” the reconstruction of the city forced technological innovation inspired by the study of Roman antiquity which promoted scientific development amidst the complex political and religious spheres of early modern Italy. Combining pictorial and written evidence such as maps, manuscripts, meeting minutes, and papal bulls with anecdotes about the challenges of archival research, Long compiles a structured look at the inner working of Rome’s bureaucratic processes and the completion of major infrastructure redesign and rebuilding.

Pamela Long noted that the purpose of her narrow focus on the years between 1557 and 1590 carve a new path in the historiography of early modern science because it allowed her to examine both the successes and the failures of the urban reconstruction projects in Rome. This differs from previous scholarly works which focus only on the successes or major innovations in this period. Since the book is focused on a narrow window of time, the author chose to organize her book topically instead of chronologically, beginning with the catalyst of the reconstruction efforts, the great flood of 1557. In chapter one, the author discussed the impacts of the severe flooding of the Tiber River and introduced the key themes of the book; the relationship between natural philosophy and the work of ancient Romans to explain and solve contemporary issues. These ideas caused the scientists and statesmen of early modern Rome to ask, what caused the river to flood? And how did the ancients explain such a phenomenon and solve it? The combination of natural philosophy and antiquarian studies are a key theme which carries throughout the book.

The topic of study in chapter two is the unsuccessful attempt at managing and cleaning the city via the streets and sewer systems. Here, Pamela Long’s expertise as an independent historian shines through with an emphasis on her archival research process using documents and archaeological reports to piece together information on late-sixteenth century drains and sewers. One of the strengths of this book is that the author concedes to the limitations of archival research where it is necessary before she makes her argument. This not only gives the reader a prompt from which to think about their own theories and interpretations of the evidence that she presents, but it adds credibility to the author’s argument through her acknowledgment of said limitations. Chapters three and four are devoted to the repair of the Acqua Vergine aqueduct and broken bridges, respectfully. The theme of the study of antiquities continued with an analysis of the While these two chapters are less interesting than the previous, they do provide an in depth look at the Roman bureaucratic system that buoyed between the people and the pope. In particular, these chapters highlighted the system of patronage which funded the artisans, engineers and architects that completed these public works projects.

Chapters five and six delve into the world of mapmaking. In chapter five, Pamela Long discusses the burgeoning mapmaking business of the sixteenth century and the topography of Rome. Innovations during this time “revolutionized” mapmaking, allowing maps to be drawn to a fixed scale. It is within the description of the fixed scale mapmaking system that the idea of the scientific revolution being a “revolution” is challenged. Long makes a point here to say that the idea and technology to create a fixed scale map had been used abundantly in ancient Mesopotamia, China, and even Rome, but they were not “continuous cartographical practices,” (114). Meaning, what may have seemed to be a “revolution” was not a revolution but a revival of older practices. Chapter six focused more on the artistic side of the mapmaking process, and on the act of printmaking itself. This chapter was a bit repetitive of chapter five but tied together the author’s argument that “reenvisioning Rome on paper and remaking Rome as a physical entity went hand in hand,” (162).

The two concluding chapters, seven and eight, felt slightly out of place compared to the rest of the book. Chapter seven discussed reforming the streets, meaning social reform and physically altering the width, scope and sometimes direction of the streets. However, this chapter felt less like it had to do with the reengineering of streets than it did with the people on them. And while this is an important aspect of any historical analysis, the two ideas felt disjointed. Chapter eight dealt with moving the Vatican Obelisk, a monolith that had been removed from Egypt in 41 CE by the emperor Caligula, and which in the sixteenth century was to be moved to a more prominent position at the Vatican. While the moving of the Obelisk was a task that required feats of engineering to accomplish, this event felt out of place among the chapters on aqueducts, bridges, sewers, and streets. Though both chapters seven and eight had moments that reflected the author’s thesis, they felt largely unnecessary.

Throughout her examination of the urban reconstruction of Rome, Long uses language that is structured for both academic audiences and the casual enthusiast of Roman history, without oversimplifying it for either. In addition, Long made a point of translating all of the Italian words and phrases she used into English for the ease of the reader, while still providing the original language in parentheses. Overall, Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome was an informative, well organized, and well researched book that skillfully argued Rome’s importance in scientific and technological advancement which was inspired by a dialogue between sixteenth century contemporaries and Roman antiquity in the journey to redesign and rebuild the city.