The other booty: the modern-colonial exploitation of indigenous knowledge

Abstract

This paper postulates the existence of processes of colonial exploitation of indigenous knowledge in the context of Spanish colonization in the sixteenth century. In the studies of the new historiography of science, there has been a tendency to value the contribution of knowledge of Asian, African and American peoples as unrecognized contributions to modern science. This work is necessary, but insufficient. In contrast, this article investigates the economic dimension of non-European knowledge that was used as part of the accumulation of capital in modern Europe. In particular, the case of American knowledge exploited by the Spanish in the framework of Iberian colonialism is presented. Given the peculiarities of the relationship between economy and knowledge, categories from a new theoretical-methodological framework, cognitive materialism, are proposed, which are applied to the understanding of this link. There is, in addition, a particularity generated by the colonial context, which requires the crossing with concepts arising from decolonial authors. Finally, conceptual precisions are suggested to i) delimit the exploitation of knowledge from other categories considered confusing and ii) describe the effects of scientific mediation in contact with non-European knowledge. Based on this theoretical framework, three sixteenth century sources are analyzed: the works of the physicians and botanists Francisco Hernández and Nicolás Monardes and the “Relaciones Geográficas” written by officials of the Crown.