Abstract
How was cultural difference perceived and handled in Renaissance Europe? This question has been famously addressed by the likes of Stephen Greenblatt and Anthony Grafton; more recently, scholars such as Christine R. Johnson in her German Discovery of the World (2008) have highlighted the influence of religious, political and economic developments within Europe on evaluations of extra-European cultures. In a similar vein, Carina L. Johnson recites the story of how, from 1500 onwards, Europeans marvelled at the ways of life and at the material culture of non-Europeans and interpreted them in ways that reflected European power struggles. What is new and original about her study is that she chose two situations of cultural encounter that are—at first sight—radically different and that are rarely treated together. She identifies the Habsburg Empire as a ‘formative arena for the ongoing categorizations of extra-European peoples’ (p. 17).
The book comprises two parts that focus on different phases in such processes of categorisation; each part is divided into three chapters. The first part (‘Categories of Inclusion’) deals with European efforts to integrate difference into existing patterns of meaning. Johnson begins by charting the ways in which New World news reached Europe (in printed news sheets, in manuscript letters and by word of mouth). She argues that roughly until the middle of the century, European ways of appropriating information from the Indies drew on classical scholars (such as Isidore of Seville or Vincent of Beauvais) and were largely affirmative. Humanist scholars like Peter Martyr of Anghiera emphasised similarities between Europeans and non-Europeans. Indian treasure was used in gift exchange and symbolic representation at European courts to highlight European rulers’ global influence (by Charles V, for example). News about the Ottoman and Indian empires were transmitted together. At this stage, both Ottomans and Indians were generally conceptualised as civilised. Only when the religious split in Europe turned out to be irreversible and the ideal of a universal empire untenable did the display of foreign sacred treasure become unacceptable. Such treasure was then de-sacralised and used to fund Habsburg military enterprises—including those directed against the Ottomans.
In the second part (‘Experiments in Exclusion’), Johnson shows how, from the middle of the century onwards, denigration increasingly replaced appreciation of extra-European cultural difference in the context of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. As new religious boundaries were being drawn and rulers forced to negotiate their positions, ethnographers and other humanist scholars attuned their descriptions of Aztecs and Ottomans to the changing tone by emphasising cultural difference over similarity and by portraying extra-Europeans as idolaters. Luther and other reformers used comparisons between Catholics and Turks to promote religious reform, and gradually developed more negative attitudes towards Islam. Catholics used the idols kept in noble Kunstkammern (cabinets of curiosity) to demonstrate their distance from non-Christian idolatry and to justify their use of religious imagery in the wake of the Council of Trent. When a cultural border zone between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires emerged in the Balkan territories and diplomatic relations were formalised, perceptions of cultural brokers came to be based on an ambivalent attitude towards cultural and religious border crossing. Like Ibrahim Bey (aka Abraham Strotzky, a Polish renegade), who made his appearance as Ottoman ambassador at the carefully orchestrated coronation of Maximilian II as King of the Romans at Frankfurt in 1562, and who helped finalise a peace treaty between Emperors Ferdinand and Süleyman, such brokers were at once indispensable and deeply distrusted. As the Habsburg rulers re-invented the legitimation of their authority, and as confessionalisation evolved, attention shifted from the Americas towards the Ottoman Empire. European scholars now began to attach cultural clichés to both, rendering ‘Turks’ and Aztecs ‘exotic’ and ‘idolatrous’—and culturally inferior to Europeans.
Johnson’s study is coherent and full of fascinating detail. It draws on an impressive array of textual sources (both manuscript and printed) and takes up the recently resurging interest in material culture by scrutinising how objects in noble collections reflected cultural evaluations. If the Conquista and the Ottoman expansion appear to be worlds apart nowadays, Johnson illustrates how Europeans integrated both Aztecs and ‘Turks’ into the same cultural hierarchies during the sixteenth century. Occasionally, one might have wished for more detailed comparisons between perceptions and categorisations of the two. Johnson confirms recent studies that have shown how cultural differences were only accentuated after an initial phase of integrating New World news into existing knowledge systems. Her work emphasises the need to further explore the relationship between intra-European dynamics (the Reformation and confessionalisation, shifting conceptions of monarchy and political plate tectonics) and the ways in which Europeans represented cultural encounters outside of Europe. She demonstrates convincingly how, far from being static, categorisations of cultural difference varied and early modern Europeans constantly developed and adapted them according to the order of the day.