Mackenzie Cooley

The first meeting is this Friday and features mini-presentations on our new Special Issue (hopp.uwpress.org/content/66/2) and meet-and-greets with new collaborators.

Have an odd pharmacopeia that you’d like to consult on? Could the platform assist you in your studies of related materials? Interested in contributing to the growing dataset?

We meet on the first Friday of the month at 9:30 am NY time via Zoom. Email mcooley@hamilton.edu for the link.

Join the Historical Pharmacopeias community for our monthly conversation - “First Friday Pharmacopeias.”

Conducting research on materia medica? Interested in HP (dalme.org/collections/...)?

Promotional graphic for "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue". The graphic shows the book's forest green cover on the far left, flanked on the right by a summarising paragraph which says: "A comparative study showing how early modern China and Spain built and balanced their empires through parallel systems of local knowledge, governance, and global exchange."

A new week means a brilliant selection of new titles from our distributed presses. First up, "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" from Lever Press's ASIANetwork Books collection.

Find it here: bit.ly/3Vcoc47
@leverpress.bsky.social
@mackenziecooley.bsky.social

The first two chapters - by Maria Portuondo and Joe Dennis - show the making of two different guidelines.

We go back in time with @lxslcs.bsky.social's elegant chapter on the precedents for the guidelines, "Imperial Territorial Data before the Age of Print: “Illustrated Guidelines.”

How did states a world apart develop similar documentary techniques to know the dominions under their control, and how do these techniques help us understand the state in question?

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, centrally appointed imperial officials in both China and the Spanish Americas were instructed to gather, compile, and submit information about the locales they administered, following a centrally issued, itemized compilation guideline or questionnaire.

A mini-intro to the first part of our book, "Knowing an Empire" with @leverpress.bsky.social

services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

Sources drawn from the originals, and artwork designed by Olivia Buckton and June Lee, mentored by Zoë Sadokierski, University of Technology Sydney School of Design.

"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" unveils how these two vast empires developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building.

services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

Thank you to everyone who took part in the conversation at the core of this book.

Last but not least, we need global histories that aren't all about loose connections. World history is full of similar inventions to solve similar problems.

As a Europeanist by training, may I also say that we need to take seriously the scale of Chinese history, and what we can learn from scholars who have navigated its incredible documentary troves.

We need more serious conversations about the early modern world that take seriously the deep knowledge of area studies without missing parallels and connections.

Barbara E. Mundy, Qun Che, He Bian, Jeremy Mikecz, Mårten Söderblom Saarela, Marcella Hayes, Zhang Xianqing, Stuart M. McManus, Niping Yan, and Dejanirah Couto.

Please check out the great chapters by María M. Portuondo, Joseph Dennis, Alexis Lycas, Shih-Pei Chen, Patricia Murrieta-Flores, Diego Jiménez-Badillo, Mariana Favila-Vázquez, Mario Cams, ...

Over the next few days, I'll be posting about each part of the book: Knowing the State, Structures of Knowing, Knowing Space, Knowing Nature, Knowing People, Connections and Transfers, and Empires of Informal Knowing.

Through a new methodology of “juxtapositional comparison,” we read the difangzhi 地方志 (local gazetteers) of China and the relaciones geográficas of the Spanish world in parallel.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, officials in both empires compiled large quantities of structured data on the climate, topography, natural products, languages, religions, and more of their locales, creating a vision of their empires as diverse yet unified.

This is a book about how two vast empires, separated by thousands of miles, developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building.

It has been a delight to work with Huiyi Wu, The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and
@leverpress.bsky.social during the research, writing, and publication of this book.

Knowing an Empire Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue unveils how these two vast empires, separated by thousands of miles, developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield kno...

"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" is now out! It's open-access via Lever Press. Please check it out here: services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

Such a pleasure to work with Lever on this book!

KNOWING AN EMPIRE by @mackenziecooley.bsky.social & Huiyi Wu is now available! This ASIANetwork Books collection reveals the dynamic dialogues between early modern China and Latin America through a new methodology. Start reading: services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

Image with the photos of the nine winners of the 2025 Dan David Prize. From left to right and top to bottom, they are Mackenzie Cooley, Bar Kribus, Fred Kuwornu, Dmitri Levitin, Beth Lew-Williams, Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, Hannah Marcus, Caroline Sturdy Colls, Alina Șerban.

Announcing the winners of the 2025 Dan David Prize – the world's largest history prize.

Winners receive $300,000 each in recognition of their contribution to the study of the past and to support their future endeavors.

Congratulations to this year's winners 👏

dandavidprize.org/winners

Knowing the Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue with @leverpress.bsky.social is now in proofs. The big work is already done. Now we just need to make sure the is are dotted, the ts crossed, and tails pinned to the now-extinct Iberian cebros!

Join @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social on Zoom tomorrow, Feb 21, 12pm EST for her book talk on "Humans: A Monstrous History" sponsored by Hamilton College's History, Medieval & Renaissance Studies Department!

➡️ hamilton.zoom.us/j/98320370360

@ucpress.bsky.social @mackenziecooley.bsky.social

Bright yellow event poster with a deep red border. Top, yellow text on red background: “Sponsored by the Hamilton History, Medieval and Renaissance Departments.” Left-hand side: long column with book abstract and author bio. Right-hand side: bright red book cover with oval mirror design. The mirror border has sci-fi monsters. Below the cover is the Zoom link. Bottom: date and time, Hamilton College logo, QR code.

Another virtual book talk for my new book, HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY from @ucpress.bsky.social !

Hamilton College, Feb 21, 12 noon / 5pm GMT.
Click on the link in the poster, or copy the link below:
hamilton.zoom.us/j/98320370360

💙📚 🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #artsky #histsci #histmed 1/🧵

Plant/People Celebrating the proliferation of plant & land-based health practices in and around Mnísota Maǩóčé

Impressed by Emily Beck's thoughtful oral history work on this website "Plant People," "celebrating the proliferation of plant & land-based health practices in and around Mnísota Maǩóčé"
z.umn.edu/plantpeople