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The Cradle of Words

Language and Knowledge in the Spanish Empire

Valeria López Fadul

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How languages served as archives of local knowledge and a crucial resource for both the human and natural history of the Americas in the Spanish empire.

In the sixteenth century, the conquest of the Americas exposed Spanish writers to previously unknown peoples and their many languages. The linguistic multiplicity of the new transatlantic empire presented enormous challenges both in terms of governance and religious conversion. Yet it also became a crucial resource for learning about the new territories' history, both natural and human. In The Cradle of Words, Valeria López Fadul reveals that...

How languages served as archives of local knowledge and a crucial resource for both the human and natural history of the Americas in the Spanish empire.

In the sixteenth century, the conquest of the Americas exposed Spanish writers to previously unknown peoples and their many languages. The linguistic multiplicity of the new transatlantic empire presented enormous challenges both in terms of governance and religious conversion. Yet it also became a crucial resource for learning about the new territories' history, both natural and human. In The Cradle of Words, Valeria López Fadul reveals that Spanish scholars, missionaries, and administrators treated the empire's multiple tongues—both at home and abroad—as rich archives of local knowledge.

These linguistic resources were exploited alongside the Americas' vast mineral and natural wealth and Indigenous labor. In the process, Spanish scholars made language itself into an object of historical inquiry. Using a wide variety of sources, López Fadul recreates the intellectual networks that crisscrossed Spain's overseas possessions and informed the imperial court's scholars. As linguistic information circulated among different kinds of scholars and local experts in Spain and in Spanish America, the history of language came to serve historical, political, and even legal arguments that were not originally linguistic in nature. By relying on varied methods like the collection of words, etymology, and the elaboration of linguistic genealogies, Spanish writers used the history of language to reconstruct the past, gain knowledge of nature, and explain the profound social transformations of their newly broadened world.

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Reviews

The Cradle of Words is a delight for word lovers. Tracking etymology's role in imperial governance and scientific research, López Fadul deftly shows how early modern scholars in Spain and the Americas mined a remarkably polylingual archive of terms and phrases. They did so to reconstruct histories of ancient migrations, pursue pharmaceutical innovation, convert new subjects to Christianity, and—not least—document Spain's growing empire.

This book is a masterclass on how words—whether in Nahuatl, Quechua, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, or Castilian—were understood to be repositories of ancient historical and natural knowledge and thus an integral part of getting to know the New World and rediscovering the history of the Old. López Fadul insightfully mines a range of sources to show how etymologies, lexicons, and toponyms were thought keys to lost knowledge essential to the governance of imperial Spain during the 16th century.

This captivating work explores how early modern Spanish scholars attempted to uncover hidden truths about God, human nature, the soul of the Empire, and the New World's societies and life through comparative linguistics. An intricate, elegant, superbly written reflection on scholarship in a tumultuous and transformative era, López Fadul's book is a must-read.

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Book Details

Release Date
Publication Date
Status
Preorder
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
296
ISBN
9781421450216
Illustration Description
18 halftones
Table of Contents

List of Images
Notes on Transcriptions and Translations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The World in the Library
2. The Search for Spain's Most Ancient Language
3. Language and the Ancient History of the

List of Images
Notes on Transcriptions and Translations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The World in the Library
2. The Search for Spain's Most Ancient Language
3. Language and the Ancient History of the Americas
4. Language and the Secrets of Nature
5. The Rudiments of All Languages
Epilogue
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Author Bio
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Valeria López Fadul

Valeria López Fadul is an Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. She is an Assistant Editor at History & Theory.