The Cradle of Words

Language and Knowledge in the Spanish Empire

Valeria López Fadul (Wesleyan University)

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English

Johns Hopkins University Press
17 December 2024

Spanish Civil War; History of science

Series: Information Cultures

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.

By: Valeria López Fadul (Wesleyan University)
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 544g
ISBN: 9781421450216
ISBN 10: 1421450216
Series: Information Cultures
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 17 December 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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

Valeria López Fadul is an assistant professor of history and Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. She is an assistant editor at History & Theory.