Giuseppe Marcocci

In The Globe on Paper, Giuseppe Marcocci (professor of Iberian History at Exeter College, Oxford) contends that many histories of the world written in the great age of European discoveries, like the field of “global history” in the present day, decentered Europe and treated non-Western cultures in a respectful manner. Marcocci discusses several exemplars of such works, maintaining that they “demand[ed] dignity and substantial respect for peoples that had recently been subjugated or who were, at the very least, culturally different and geographically distant” from Europe (9). As such, these histories often “clashed with official projects of political and religious powers,” because they did not always legitimize national projects of conquest, colonialism, and exploitation (9) . Furthermore, Marcocci argues, they “circulated, fostered debates, and went through adaptations and translations” (14) that widened their impact.

Marcocci’s work is, gratifyingly, verbosely footnoted, with an extensive bibliography, index, and several illustrations. Marcocci’s examples and his evaluation of them convincingly illustrate his contentions: that early world histories made in the wake of Europe’s exploration and expansion were global in scope, ecumenical in tone, respectful of foreign cultures, and comparative in analysis. “Renaissance culture went global,” Marcocci explains, “now conceiving of the globe as a single entity” (175). He undermines his case, however, with an admission that: “Renaissance histories of the world never acquired the fully autonomous status of a genre” and “never formed a definite and consistent tradition” (16). Still, the number of examples of this “style” (if genre does not apply) that Marcocci examines allows many of the early examples of discovery literature to be viewed in a new context, which should be intriguing to scholars interested in understanding these “globes on paper” from the great age of discovery.… (mehr)