Simona Boscani Leoni: "Mapping Territories and People through Questionnaires: Strategies of Information-Gathering between the Americas and the Apennines"

Research presentation by Simona Boscani Leoni, Université de Lausanne.

The event will be held online. To register for the Zoom link, please email instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se. Participants are invited to attend the online seminar on site in Uppsala. Please note that there has been a change of room.

The Instructing Colonial Natural History Seminar Series is organised by the Instructing Natural History Research Group at Uppsala University.

Abstract

My talk aims to reflect on the spread of questionnaires from the 16th century until the early part of the 18th century. Initially, I will focus on the development of questionnaires in the Atlantic area, in the context of the construction of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas. I will then move on to the analysis of their reception on the continent, particularly in the circle of the Royal Society. As a final point, I want to show how European 'wild' territories were also 'discovered' thanks to the spread of this empirical practice in the circles of naturalists; I am referring in particular to the Alpine region and the Apennines. My analysis aims to reflect on the importance of these practices for scientific development in the modern era and on the commercial and political interests linked to these practices in extremely diverse political contexts.

Image: Frontispiece of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Ούρεσιφοίτης: Helveticus sive Itinera per Helvetiae alpinas regiones facta annis 1702–1707, 1709–1711. Plurimis tabulis æneis illustrata. In quatuor tomos distincta, Leiden, 1723.