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As the British and French empires expanded, constructing new imperial dimensions through growing commerce and the relationships of industrialisation, the bases of Spanish power were being undermined. Nationalism, revolt, the pursuit of forms of decolonisation (often aided by Spain's rivals) became the prime characteristic of Central and South American politics. This book examines the study of natural history in the Spanish empire in the years 1750-1850, explaining how the Spanish authorities collected specimens for the
that separated the naturalist from the scholastic or the non-specialist traveller was his reliance upon precision instruments. The possession and use of specialist equipment enhanced the accuracy and credibility of the naturalist’s observations, forming an integral part of his professional identity. In an environment where voluminous apparatus made by master craftsmen evidenced scholarly rigour, having
the llanos’. Humboldt presumed, on this basis, that del Pozo would welcome ‘the opinions of two travellers who could compare his apparatus with those constructed in Europe’. His supposition proved correct, for the Venezuelan relished the opportunity to inspect the Europeans’ staggering selection of precision instruments and watched in awe as Humboldt performed physiological experiments on the local
enhance their social standing and their scientific credibility. I consider the role of precision instruments, physical suffering and moral probity in the construction of the naturalist’s professional identity, and I also assesses how indigenous people, women and creoles measured up to these demanding criteria. I am concerned, throughout the book, with what qualified a person as a trustworthy purveyor of
the first phase of industrial development. The coexistence of these two development models, and their evolution over time, has had a major impact on the dynamics of world watchmaking. Second, it is about the nature of the product that has conditioned the globalisation process. Until the 1960s, the watch was a relatively expensive object, but one that was easy to transport. It is a precision instrument, comprising many components, for which the mechanisation of production is a complex process. The cost of labour played an essential role. This is
, making Japanese exports more expensive. Japanese manufacturers responded with enormous investment in technology-intensive production: general machinery, electrical machinery, transport equipment and precision instruments, while leaving behind heavy chemical, petroleum and metal industries as well as labour-intensive textiles and food. 6 From the time of the plaza accord, Japanese
the passage is the least interlingual and cosmopolitan, the least European of the three versions. The phrases ‘F r e i h e i t, G l e i c h h e i t, E i g e n t h u m, und B e n t h a m,’ ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternite et Bentham’ and ‘Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham’ all provocatively join together common and proper nouns; but the German and French versions also juxtapose different national histories in a way that the English version does not. We may recall that when Dickens started to use the dual alphabet as a precision instrument in Martin Chuzzlewit
associated with revolutionary Marxism (discussed in Chapters 6 and 7 ) and suffragist feminism (discussed in Chapter 10 ). Dickens himself, whose work influenced both the suffragists and the Marxists, began to use the capital letter as a precision instrument in Martin Chuzzlewit in 1843–44, to express his disenchantment with the rhetoric of American republican patriotism following his American tour of 1840. This early experimentation is discussed in Chapter 3 . In his later work, especially in Dombey and Son (1847–48), Bleak House (1852–53), Little Dorrit
France, because it was entirely centred on ‘vocal pyrotechnics’ and ‘a hotchpotch of gestures’. Marinetti criticised the fact that the performer’s lower body was kept too immobile, and that the movements of the upper body were far too decorative and rhetorical. Instead, he wanted to mechanise the human body in a manner as indicated in his previous manifestos, Geometrical and Mechanical Splendour and Sensitivity towards Numbers and Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine. In these texts, he had praised the ‘sparkling perfection of precision instruments’ (Marinetti
, north Manchester. He was the son of Italian immigrants from Como who settled in the city in the mid-nineteenth century and his father was a precision instrument maker Wolff and Savage, Culture in Manchester.indd 76 14/08/2013 11:37:27 M a n u fa c t u r i n g t h e R e n a i s s a n c e 77 Figure 11: Giovanni Alberti, Dante bust (1906). and optician. A prodigious scholar theologian, he secured a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Louvain, lectured in Iranian at the University of Manchester and was Rector of St Bede’s College, alma mater of