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Enlightenment America and the Hierarchy of Races: Disputes Over the Writing of History in the Encyclopaedia Britannica(1768-1788)*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
In the 1780s, the dispute about the New World entered a new phase. Creole voices redesigned the spatial, political, and economic matrix of modern thought about race within an Atlantic framework. By focusing on the changing eighteenth-century entry on “America,” this article considers the successful commercial enterprise of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was conceived in Scotland. It examines the intellectual shift in reference from the Scottish Enlightenment of William Robertson to the antiquarian history advocated by Francisco Xavier Clavijero, a Mexican Jesuit, exiled in the Papal States. The new cartography of knowledge endorsed by the Encyclopaedia led to a racial classification associating Scriptures and providential history.
- Type
- Atlantic History
- Information
- Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 217 - 251
- Copyright
- Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2012
Footnotes
*
This paper is the result of research undertaken with a Marie Curie postdoctoral scholarship at the EHESS. Parts of it have been discussed during several international symposia (in Budapest, Florence, Trieste, São Paulo, Edinburgh, and Mexico City), as well as at the EHESS in the seminar on the history of missions and in that on Britishness. I would like to thank all those who, on these various occasions, contributed with diverse questions and, in particular, those who followed the evolution of this latest version: Catherine Bouchey, Adrien Delmas, Alice Ingold, Antoine Lilti, Jacques Revel, Antonella Romano, Hélène Soldini, and Stéphane Van Damme.
References
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16. George Gleig (1753-1840) was educated in a Jacobite and Episcopalian family committed to the Stuart cause. Politically prosecuted, the Episcopalians only acknowledged Georges III’s legitimacy upon the death of the Stuart heir Charles Edward in 1788. In the context of a dialogue between Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Gleig presented his proposal for an encyclopedia. It must also be noted that William Robertson, in his capacity as leader of the Presbyterian Church, advocated a position of openness and tolerance toward Episcopalians and Catholics. See: Walker, William, Life of the Right Reverend George Gleig, LL.D, F.S.S.A., Bishop of Brenchin, and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1878)Google Scholar; Grub, George, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Edmonstone & Douglas, 1861), 4:99, 124-35 Google Scholar, and 174-89; and Mather, Frederick C., “Church, Parliament and Penal Laws: Some Anglo-Scottish Interactions in the Eighteenth Century,” English Historical Review 92 (1977): 540-72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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19. “Scotland”: EB1 3:571; EB2 9:6988-7173; and EB3 16:722-99. “Edinburgh”: EB1 1:466-67; EB2 4:2610-23; and EB3 6:298-321. “Smoke” (EB1 3:607-13) was probably written by James Anderson (1739-1808), who had studied chemistry with William Cullen before becoming a specialist in agriculture and political economy. Anderson was probably also the author of “Dictionary” and “Pneumatics.” See Kafker and Loveland, Early Britannica, 19, 21, and 33. In EB3 (17:547-53), the main source on pollution became Benjamin Franklin. There are many more examples of “Scotticisms”: for example, a large part of the article “Law” is devoted to “Law in Scotland” in all editions, including the American one.
20. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book, 556-60.
21. William Robertson did not seem to be acquainted with EB1 and its publishers when, in August 1773, he answered the question put to him by his main French translator, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard, who thought it was a revised version of the Encyclopédie. See Darnton, Business of Enlightenment, 45-50, 58-59, 86-88, 395-402, and 421-22.
22. From the first edition, Smellie took sides against Hume in the quarrel over miracles; he supported George Campbell, the Principal of Marischal College in Aberdeen, whose Dissertation on Miracles had been published in 1762: “Abridgement,” EB1 1:6-7. On criticism of Kames’s polygenism, see “America,” EB2 1:303-8 and below.
23. In a letter to the Monthly Review in August 1765, Smellie vindicated the philosophy of Common Sense, which had been published in Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid & J. Bell, 1764). In it, he expressed his conviction that the same “constitution of our nature” leads man to believe in principles such as the existence of external objects, “without being able to give any other reason for our belief than by referring to the common sense of mankind.” See Kerr, Memoirs, 1:304-16. In the article “Sense, common,” as integrated into the appendix of vol. 10 in EB2, adherence to the Aberdeen philosophers of Common Sense—such as James Beattie, George Campbell, James Oswald, and Thomas Reid (EB2 10:9158)—was voiced. This was also expressed in the articles “Ideas” (EB2 10:9104-7) and “Theology” (EB2 10:8582-90): philosophy and theology were “closely linked,” as revealed religion was based on natural religion, and the latter had to be understood in a philosophical sense. The blind poet Thomas Blacklock, a friend of James Beattie and Tytler’s contributor, to whom Gleig ascribed the preface of EB2 (see Supplement to the Third Edition 1:78-80), published an anonymous reply to Joseph Priestley’s criticism of the Common Sense Philosophy in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review (vol. 2, 1774, pp. 771-79; vol. 3, 1775, pp. 33-37, 96-102, and 146-54). A passage from the Introduction (EB2 1:III) restates the principles of Common Sense philosophy, such as the Lockean philosophy of the mind as a tabula rasa. See Kafker, and Loveland, , Early Britannica, 76, 96, and 133-134 Google Scholar.
24. Reid, Thomas, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Edinburgh: J. & J. Robinson, 1785), 523 Google Scholar.
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27. Walker, , Life of the Right Reverend George Gleig, 218 Google Scholar.
28. EB3 1:IX.
29. The costs of the various editions are recorded in detail by Kafker and Loveland, Early Britannica. With the third edition, the Encyclopaedia Britannica became “a compulsory acquisition for any self-respecting multi-disciplinary institution.” See Yeo, Encyclopedic Visions, 51. For a more general analysis, see: Clair, William St., The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Allan, David, A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England (London: The British Library, 2008)Google Scholar.
30. “America,” EB2 1:302.
31. “America,” EB1 1:134-35.
32. “America,” EB2 1:302-5. The challenge is repeated word-for-word in EB3 1:562-65. Home, Henry, Kames, Lord, Sketches of the History of Man, 2 tomes (Edinburgh/London: W. Creech/W. Strahan/T. Cadell, 1774)Google Scholar. See “The Diversity of Men, and of Languages,” where Kames takes up many arguments from Voltaire’s Philosophie de l’histoire (Amsterdam: Changuion, 1765), which has served as the introduction to Essai sur les mœurs since 1769. Kames is frequently cited in the Britannica with regard to aesthetics, particularly his Elements of Criticism (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid & J. Bell, 1762).
33. “America,” EB2 1:299.
34. The sources I have been able to identify as references for EB2 are the following: Forster, Georg, A Voyage Round the World in his Britannic Majesty’s Sloap, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4 and 5, 2 vols. (London: B. White, 1777)Google Scholar; La Condamine, Charles Marie de, A Succint Abridgement of a Voyage, Made in the Inland Parts of America from the French of M. de la Condamine (1745) (London: E. Withers, 1747 Google Scholar); La Condamine, Charles Marie de, Journal du voyage fait par ordre du Roi (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1751 Google Scholar); and Juan, George and Ulloa, Antonio de, A Voyage to South-America (1748-49) (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1758)Google Scholar, reprinted with notes by John Adams in 1772. On Ulloa’s Noticias Americanas, see note 103. See also Safier, Neil, Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35. Switzer, Richard, “America in the Encyclopédie ,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 58 (1967): 1481-99 Google Scholar; Gerbi, La disputa del Nuovo Mondo, chap. 4.
36. On anti-imperialism in Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, which is the major source for the representation of the New World in the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, see Muthu, Sankar, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 72-121 Google Scholar.
37. The theory of stages has been addressed in a number of different historiographical analyses, for which the main references may be found in the updated bibliography at the end of Trevor-Roper, Hugh R., History and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays, ed. Robertson, John (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)Google Scholar. On the role of America in the new historical vision of British Enlightenment, see Armitage, David, “The New World and British Historical Thought. From Richard Hakluyt to William Robertson,” in America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750, ed. Kupperman, Karen Ordahl (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 52-75 Google Scholar.
38. Robertson, William, History of America, 3 vols., 5th ed. (London: W. Strahan, 1788 Google Scholar), book IV, 2:52. Robertson applies to America what Smith had taught in his lectures on jurisprudence in Glasgow: “The difference of employment occasions the difference of genius and we see accordingly that amongst savages, where there is very little diversity of employment, there is hardly any diversity of temper or genius.” Smith, Adam, Lectures on Jurisprudence, eds. Meek, Ronald L., Raphael, David Daiches, and Stein, Peter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 348 Google Scholar; Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 3rd ed. 1790; repr. 1984), 200-9 Google Scholar. See Sebastiani, Silvia, “National Characters and Race: A Scottish Enlightenment Debate,” in Being Sociable: Character and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, eds. Ahnert, Thomas and Manning, Susan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 187-205 Google Scholar.
39. Sebastiani, Silvia, I limiti del progresso. Razza e genere nell’Illuminismo scozzese (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008)Google Scholar.
40. Meek, Ronald L., Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976 Google Scholar).
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42. Buffon asserted this in volume III of the Histoire Naturelle sur les quadrupèdes, in the part devoted to common animals in both the Old and New Worlds. The sentence was quoted, only to be rejected, by Thomas Jefferson, who opposed his own experience and direct observation to the philosophers who formulated their ideas without ever leaving their study. See Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1782), ed. Peden, William (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 59 Google Scholar. For a commentary, see Duchet, Michèle, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Albin Michel, 1971; repr. 1995), 265 Google Scholar.
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44. Pocock, John G. A., Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2, Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 316-28 Google Scholar and 4:157-204.
45. Koselleck, Reinhart, Le futur passé. Contribution à la sémantique des temps historiques, trans. Hoock, Jochen and Hoock, Marie-Claire (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 1979; repr. 1990)Google Scholar; Osterhammel, Jürgen, “Modi di rappresentazione dell’estraneo nel Settecento: l’esperienza della distanza,” Comunità 43.191/192 (1989): 36-68 Google Scholar; Ginzburg, Carlo, Occhiacci di legno. Nove riflessioni sulla distanza (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998), 194-210 Google Scholar; and Hartog, François, Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris: Le Seuil, 2002)Google Scholar.
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49. According to Arnaldo Momigliano, this was the basis of modern historiography: “Storia antica e antiquaria,” “Il contributo di Gibbon al metodo storico,” and “Preludio Settecentesco a Gibbon,” in Sui fondamenti della storia antica (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 3-45, 294-311, and 312-27.
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52. Certeau, Michel de, Préface, , in L’écriture de l’histoire, 2e éd. (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1980 Google Scholar).
53. Robertson, History of America, book VIII, 3:299.
54. Brown, Stewart J., “An Eighteenth-Century Historian on the Amerindians: Culture, Colonialism and Christianity in William Robertson’s History of America,” Studies in World Christianity 2 (1996): 204-22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smitten, Jeffrey, “Impartiality in Robertson’s History of America,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 19 (1989): 56-77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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56. “Mexico,” EB2 7:4967-88, quotation p. 4988. “Peru,” EB2 8:5981-96. The other source on Peru that is quoted is La Condamine’s Relation abrégée.
57. “Colony,” EB2 3:2076-80; “Plantership,” EB2 8:6212-19.
58. “America;” EB3 1:552.
59. Kruse, Paul, “The Story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1768-1943,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1958), 56-57 Google Scholar; Arner, Dobson’s Encyclopaedia, 83.
60. On Robertson’s role as leader of the moderate party and the Scottish Enlightenment, see Sher, Richard B., Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985 Google Scholar).
61. Clavigero, Francisco Javier, Storia antica del Messico cavata da’ migliori storici Spagnuoli, e da’ manoscriti, e dalle pitture antiche degl’Indiani, 2 vols. (Cesena: Gregorio Biasini all’Insagna di Pallade, 1780-1781)Google Scholar. On Clavijero’s biography and historical work, see: Ronan, Charles E., Francisco Javier Clavigero, S.J. (1731-1787), Figure of the Mexican Enlightenment: His Life and Works (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Brading, David A., The Origins of Mexican Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 3-23 Google Scholar; Brading, David A., The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State, 1492-1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 253-72 Google Scholar and 422-64; Pagden, Anthony, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 91-116 Google Scholar); Cañizares-Esguerra, , How to Write the History of the New World, 60-62, 186-90, and 235-49 Google Scholar; Pocock, , Barbarism and Religion 4:205-26 Google Scholar; and Bolaños, Arturo Reynoso, “Naturaleza e historia. Análisis de la visión científica y teológica de Francisco Xavier Clavigero (1731-1787), un jesuita mexicano en el Siglo de las Luces,” (PhD diss., Centre Sèvres, Paris, 2011)Google Scholar.
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63. See McKelvey, James Lee, “William Robertson and Lord Bute,” Studies in Scottish Literature 6 (1968-1969): 238-47 Google Scholar; Brown, Stewart J., “Robertson and the Scottish Enlightenment,” in William Robertson and the Expansion of the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 7-35 Google Scholar. In his dedication, Cullen referred to “the Obligation I am under to your Lordship for an Acquaintance with the Original” from Clavijero, which seems to indicate that Lord Bute had given him the book.
64. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book, 390 and Appendix.
65. W. Robertson to Lord Elliock, ms. 1036, fol. 106, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Robertson, preface to History of America, XVIII-XIX. Regarding this quarrel, see Sebastiani, Silvia, “Las escrituras de la historia del Nuevo Mundo: Clavijero y Robertson en el contexto de la Ilustración europea,” Historia y Grafía 37 (2011): 203-36 Google Scholar.
66. Smith, Samuel Stanthope, An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species ... A New Edition with Some Additional Notes, by a Gentleman of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: C. Elliott, 1788)Google Scholar.
67. During the same period, Barton wrote his medical dissertation against the image of Indians conveyed by Principal Robertson, which was to remain a controversial topic throughout his works: “An Essay toward a Natural History of the North American Indians. Being an Attempt to Describe, and to Investigate the Causes of Some of the Varieties in Figure, in Complexion etc. among Mankind” (1788-1790), ms. Records, vol. XXIII, fols. 1-17, Archives of the Royal Medical Society, Edinburgh.
68. “Chronology,” EA 4:748-75. “A Chronological Table of Remarkable Events, Discoveries, and Inventions, from the Creation [viz. 4008 BC] to the Year 1789” concludes the article, adding the two fundamental dates, 1787 and 1789, as opposed to EB3, of which the chronology ended with 1783, the date when the Independence of the American Colonies was recognized. The EA continues up until the French Constitution of August 6, 1789, preceded by the March meeting of the first Congress of the USA.
69. Such is the opinion of Cullen in his preface to F. J. Clavijero, History of Mexico 1:v.
70. Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 59; Franklin, Benjamin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, peopling of Countries, & c” (1751), in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, eds. Labaree, Leonard W. et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 3:234 Google Scholar. On the relationship between the observer and the historian, see Hartog, François, Évidence de l’histoire. Ce que voient les historiens (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 2005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
71. Hartog, François, Anciens, modernes, sauvages (Paris: Galaade, 2005)Google Scholar; Certeau, Michel de, “Histoire et anthropologie chez Lafitau” (1980) in Le lieu de l’autre. Histoire religieuse et mystique, ed. Giard, Luce (Paris: Le Seuil - Gallimard, 2005), 89-111 Google Scholar; Revel, Jacques, “The Uses of Comparison. Religions in the Early Eighteenth Century,” in Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion, eds. Hunt, Lynn A. et al. (Los Angeles: Ghetty Research Institute, 2010), 331-47 Google Scholar.
72. Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, 63. My interpretation differs from that of Cañizares in what I perceive to be the epistemological limits of Clavijero’s Christian universalism, which I attempt to explain in the latter part of this analysis.
73. See Curto, Diogo Ramada, ed., The Jesuits and Cultural Intermediacy in Early Modern World, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXIV/147, 2005 Google Scholar; Castelnau-L’Éstoile, Charlotte de et al., eds., Missions d’évangélisation et circulation des savoirs. XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Madrid : Casa de Velázquez, 2011 Google Scholar).
74. Monthly Review 76 (1787): 633-40. The quotation refers to Clavijero’s “Dissertation VI,” 633. The same review was published in the Scots Magazine 49 (1787): 446-49 and 548-51. See also The English Review, or, An Abstract of English and Foreign Literature 9 (1787): 401-10; 10 (1787): 170-82; and 11 (1787): 176-87, which says that Clavijero’s history gives “authentic information” about Mexico, past and present.
75. “Who would imagine, from the pomp and gravity of this account that the author was speaking of a parcel of illiterate savages?” Clavijero’s history is described as “an enormous structure of two solid quartos stuffed with impossible facts, absurd exaggerations, and such a barbarous jargon of uncouth names, as to be within one degree of absolute unintelligibility. ... For our part, if Robertson be wrong, we are content to be wrong with him.” The European Magazine, and London Review 12 (1787): 16-18 and 125-29, quotations on pp. 16-17 and 18.
76. Clavijero was described as capable of observing “with the eye of a philosopher” and of arranging “from the natives exact information with respect to every object of any consequence”; he could be considered “an ocular witness of what he relates,” who opened “some new sources of evidence” on “the state and progress of civilization and arts in Mexico.”
77. “Moral Philosophy,” EB3 12:272-318. The quotation is an excerpt from the new introduction to the entry the “History of the Science of Morals,” written by Gleig, 273. The rest of the article mainly follows what had been abridged by Smellie on the basis of Fordyce, David, Elements of Moral Philosophy (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1754 Google Scholar).
78. Robertson, John, “The Scottish Enlightenment,” Rivista Storica Italiana 108 (1996), 792-829 Google Scholar; Robertson, John, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1-51 Google Scholar.
79. For more details, see Sebastiani, Silvia, “Conjectural History vs. the Bible: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Historians and the Idea of History in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” Storia della Storiografia 39 (2001), 39-50 Google Scholar.
80. Smith, Adam, “Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages” (1761), published as an appendix to the third edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid et J. Bell, 1767)Google Scholar. See “Language,” EB3 9:529-61. The article, which was written by Gleig and followed by a long note written by the philologist David Doig on the original language, focused on the “veritable,” or divine, origin of language. In this entry, Adam Smith was associated with Rousseau, Voltaire, and Condillac, as opposed to James Beattie and Samuel Stanhope Smith.
81. “Comparative Anatomy,” EB3 5:249-74. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lord Monboddo—a Scottish Judge in the Court of Session in Edinburgh and author of the six-volume Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh: J. Balfour, 1773-1792)—were the principal targets of the article for having, on the one hand, reduced the wild man to the animal level, and, on the other hand, for having raised the orang-outang to the rank of human being.
82. “History,” EB3 8:561-600, quotation on p. 561. The article was not very different from the one published in EB2 (5:3649-88); it devoted a whole section to “Ecclesiastical History” and was essentially based upon biblical chronology. See also in EB3: “Creation” 5:522-26; “Earth” 6:229-64; “Instinct” 9:259-69; “Moral Philosophy” 12:272; “Religion” 16:61; and “Savage” 16:672.
83. Gleig, George, “Advertissement,” in Two Letters on the Savage State, addressed to the late Lord Kames, by Doig, David (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1792), XIII Google Scholar. This text was written in 1774 but only published twenty years later. David Doig (1719-1800) wrote the articles “Mythology,” “Mysteries,” and “Philology” for EB3.
84. “Society,” EB3 17:568-90, quotation on p. 569. Robert Heron (1764-1807) was a marginal figure in Scottish circles, having spent several years in prison for debt. He contributed to many journals and newspapers, such as the Edinburgh Magazine, the London Review, the Universal Magazine, and the Anti-Jacobin Review. He was also the author of A New General History of Scotland (Perth: R. Morrison, 1794-1799) and the New and Complete System of Universal Geography, To Which is Added a Philosophical View of Universal History (Edinburgh: R. Morison, 1796).
85. “Religion,” EB3 16:62.
86. “Moral Philosophy,” EB3 12:273.
87. “Society,” EB3 17:569.
88. “Savage,” EB3 16:672.
89. Smith, An Essay, note h by Barton, p. 108. Quoting Doig in the second American edition of his Essay (New Brunswick: J. Simpson and Co., 1810), Smith added a whole section against the universal and primordial savage state (pp. 15-27). Barton did likewise, whereas, in New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (Philadelphia: J. Bioren, 1797), he put forward a sophisticated justification of American republicanism using Clavijero as an alternative model to Robertson.
90. On internal tensions within the discourse on progress in the Scottish Enlightenment, see Sebastiani, I limiti del progresso.
91. “Savage,” EB3 16:672-73; Doig, Two Letters, 64-68.
92. “Miracle,” EB3 12:169-74, quotation on p. 170. This article was also written by Gleig.
93. “Savage,” EB3 16:672.
94. Gleig, George, Some Account of the Life and Writings of William Robertson (Edinburgh: 1812), lvi Google Scholar. In direct opposition to the criticism addressed by Dugald Stewart to Robertson in 1796 about Robertson’s excessive indulgence toward destructions caused by the Spanish, see Biographical Memoirs of Adam Smith, L.L.D., of William Robertson, D.D. and of Thomas Reid, D.D. Read Before the Royal Society of Edinburgh ... (Edinburgh: G. Ramsay and Co.,1811), 241-42. Otherwise the aim of Gleig’s biography of a “Presbyterian Divine” was to present his Episcopalian version of Scottish ecclesiastical history.
95. “Mexico,” EB3 11:633-86. The article “Peru” (EB3 14:199-221) is also enriched by six pages on the Incas taken from The New Universal Traveler (London: G. Robinson, 1779) by Jonathan Carver, an American soldier, explorer, and author of the popular Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768 (London: J. Walter, 1778).
96. In the new version of the article “Colony” (EB3 5:148-50), commercial colonies lose the positive connotations they had in EB2 (see note 56).
97. “America,” EB3 1:161-62. These are the first lines of the Remarks Concerning the Savages of North-America (1784), in The Bagatelles from Passy, by Benjamin Franklin, ed. Claude A. Lopez (New York: Eakins Press, 1967).
98. “Monster,” EB3 12:245-49.
99. “America,” EB3 1:574-617.
100. “Brasil”: EB2 2:1353-55; EB3 3:516-18. “California”: EB2 3:1578-80; EB3 4:41-42. “Chili”: EB2 3:1903-5; EB3 4:647-49. “Paraguay”: EB2 8:5857-58; EB3 13:729-33. In fact, the Encyclopédie of Yverdon paid a great deal of attention to these same articles, doubling their length or rewriting them completely. See Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, “De l’Encyclopédie de Paris à l’Encyclopédie d’Yverdon : la diffusion de savoirs sur le monde colonial (l’exemple de l’Amérique latine)” in L’Encyclopédie d’Yverdon et sa résonance européenne. Contextes, contenus, continuités, eds. Jean-Daniel Candeaux et al. (Paris: H. Champion, 2005), 256-76.
101. “America,” EB3 1:574 and 617. Regarding the political side of the article, see Castagneto, Pierangelo, “Uomo, natura e società nelle edizioni settecentesche dell’Encyclopaedia Britannica” in L’enciclopedismo in Italia nel XVIII secolo, ed. Abbattista, Guido (Naples: Studi Settecenteschi, 1996), 435-76 Google Scholar. As expected, this section underwent the most changes in the American version revised by Jedidiah Morse, the EA’s most important contributor and author of Geography Made Easy (New Haven: Meigs, Bowen, and Dana, 1784) and American Geography (Elizabeth Town: 1789), which were already important sources on the United States for EB3. For an in-depth discussion of the changes that took beyond the Atlantic, see: Arner, Dobson’s Encyclopaedia; Arner, Robert D., “Thomas Dobson’s American Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica ,” Notable Encyclopaedias of the Late Eighteenth Century: Eleven Successors of the Encyclopédie, ed. Kafker, Frank A. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1994), 201-54 Google Scholar.
102. “Comparative Anatomy,” EB3 5:249-74; “Complexion,” EB3 5:286-90. Some passages are directly taken from the account published in the Monthly Review about Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmermann, Geographische Geschichte des Menschen (Leipzig: Weygandschen Buchhandlung, 1778-83): vols. 80, 1789, 678-90; vols. 81, 1789, pp. 633-41. Texts by Zimmermann, Johannn Friedrich Blumenbach, and Petrus Camper—Dutch physician and member of the Royal Society—along with observations by Samuel Stanhope Smith, define the scientific framework of EB3, in opposition to “false ignorance.”
103. Gascoigne, John, “Blumenbach, Banks, and the Beginnings of Anthropology at Göttingen,” in Göttingen and the Development of the Natural Sciences, ed. Rupke, Nicolaas A. (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2002), 86-98 Google Scholar; Ewan, Joseph and Ewan, Nesta Dunn, Benjamin Smith Barton. Naturalist and Physician in Jeffersonian America (St Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden, 2007)Google Scholar; and Bödeker, Hans Erich et al., eds., Göttingen vers 1800. L’Europe des sciences de l’homme (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 2008; repr. 2010)Google Scholar.
104. “America,” EB3 1:542-43, mentions the French translation of the Noticias Americanas: Mémoires philosophiques, historiques, physiques, concernant la découverte de l’Amérique ... Avec des observations&additions ... Traduit par M***, 2 vols. (Paris: Buisson, 1787). M*** is Le Febvre de Villebrune, a physician who also translated Gian Rinaldo Carli’s Lettres américaines (Paris: Buisson, 1788). Observations and additions are by J. G. Schneider, who had commented the German version, published in Leipzig in 1781.
105. “America,” EB3 1:551.
106. “America,” EB3 1:560; Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 113-14. The EA no longer gave any credence to Ulloa’s thesis.
107. “America,” EB3 1:552-53; EA 1:583, with slight variations; and Clavijero, History of Mexico 2:331-32.
108. This is an almost literal translation of excerpts from Buffon, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1749), 3:371-530, in particular pp. 371-73, 381, and 401.
109. “Slavery is, indeed, in every form an evil; but it ... can be advantageously removed only by degrees,” that is when Blacks attain a level of “moral cultivation” that will “enable them to support the rank and discharge the duties of free men.” Their physical appearance and the color of their skin are not only the result of the climate, but also of their wild way of life. Access to civilization will whiten their skin. In EB3, see: “Slavery” 12:522-34, quotation on p. 533; “Negroe” 12:794-98; “Ethiopia” 6:743-800; “Guinea” 8:177-90; “Assiento” 2:404-5; and “Hispaniola,” Supplement, 1:741-43. Smith, p. 99 sq.
110. “Man,” Supplement 2:164-65.
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This is a translation of: L’Amérique des Lumières et la hiérarchie des races