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This volume takes a decentered look at early modern empires and rejects the center/periphery divide. With an unconventional geographical set of cases, including the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg, Iberian, French and British empires, as well as China, contributors seize the spatial dynamics of the scientific enterprise.

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Introduction; László Kontler, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani, and Borbála Zsuzsanna Török PART I: NEGOTIATION OF (TRANS-)IMPERIAL PATRONAGE 1. Was Astronomy the Science of Empires?: An Eighteenth-Century Debate in View of the Cases of Tycho and Galileo; Gábor Almási 2. The Jesuits´ Negotiation of Science between France and China (1685-1722): Knowledge and Modes of Imperial Expansion; Catherine Jami 3. The Uses of Knowledge and the Symbolic Map of the Enlightened Monarcy of the Habsburgs: Maximilian Hell as Imperial and Royal Astronomer (1755-1792); László Kontler PART II: COMPETITION OF EMPIRES: A MOTOR OF CHANGE IN KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND AUTHENTICATION 4. Capitalizing Manuscripts, Confronting Empires: Anquetil-Duperron and the Economy of Oriental Knowledge in the Context of the Seven Years´ War; Stéphane Van Damme 5. Contested Locations of Knowledge: The Malaspina Expedition along the Eastern Coast of Patagonia (1789); Marcelo Fabián Figueroa 6. "To Round Out this Immense Country": The Circulation of Cartographic and Historiographical Knowledge from Brazil to Angola; Catarina Madeira-Santos PART III: SELF-ASSERTION OF NEW NODES OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION 7. Mexico: An American Hub in the Making of European China in the Seventeenth Century; Antonella Romano 8. Anthropology beyond Empires: Samuel Stanhope Smith and the Reconfiguration of the Atlantic World; Silvia Sebastiani 9. Measuring the Strength of a State: Staatenkunde in Hungary around 1800; Borbála Zsuzsanna Török

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Gábor Almási, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Austria Catherine Jami, CNRS, France Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute, Italy Marcelo Fabián Figueroa, Universidad Nacional de Tucuman, Argentina Catarina Madeira-Santos, EHESS, France

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