Taming nature. Early modern variations on the Human-Animal relationship

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the analysis of conceptualtransitions around nature in early modern Europe and Latin America, as they arerepresented and used in missionary narratives. Some general assumptions need tobe clarified as a departing point. One is that the boundary between animal andhuman is ambiguous and ambivalent in both missionary narratives and indigenoustraditions, which created a middle ground concept that may have facilitatedChristian conversion. Another assumption is that human-nature ambiguitysurvives over the long term in missionary practice, even though the Europeanintellectual tradition tends to create and consolidate a clear-cut separationbetween nature and humanity, especially beginning the 18th century. The lateemergence of a great nature-culture divide is above all a political fact thatneeds historical contextualization.