Frei Universität (hosted by Stefan Rinke), Tuesday November 25, 6-7:30pm

organized by Shih-Pei Chen

How did scientific knowledge and imperial expansion evolve together in the early modern world? What did it mean for an empire to “know itself”? This roundtable rethinks the intertwined histories of empire and science. Challenging narratives that position the Chinese and Spanish empires as backward counterpoints to Northern European modernity, we frame them instead as sophisticated, knowledge-making entities deeply engaged with scientific inquiry into scale, diversity, and political authority. By juxtaposing the relaciones geográficas questionnaires of the Spanish world and difangzhi gazetteers of China, contributors show how bureaucratic documents create epistemic infrastructures, spaces where centralizing methodologies confronted local knowledge and where the ambitions and limits of state control became clear.

A roundtable with authors, and a vision of the future for early modern studies.