Cosmos and Colonialism

<p> Alexander von Humboldt explored the Spanish Empire on the verge of its collapse (1799-1804). He is the most significant German travel writer and the most important mediator between Europe and the Americas of the nineteenth century. His works integrated knowledge from two dozen domains. Today he is at the center of debates on imperial discourse postcolonialism and globalization. This collection of fifty essays brings together a range of responses many presented here for the first time in English. Authors from Schiller Chateaubriand Sarmiento and Nietzsche to Robert Musil Kurt Tucholsky Ernst Bloch and Alejo Carpentier paint the historical background. Essays by contemporary travel writers and recent critics outline the current controversies on Humboldt. The source materials collected here will be indispensable to scholars of German French and Latin and North American literature as well as cultural and postcolonial studies history art history and the history of science.</p>