Cultural hierarchy in sixteenth-century Europe: the Ottomans and Mexicans

Abstract

"This book argues that sixteenth-century European encounters with the newly discovered Mexicans (in the Aztec Empire) and the newly dominant Ottoman Empire can only be understood in relation to the cultural and intellectual changes wrought by the Reformation. Carina L. Johnson chronicles the resultant creation of cultural hierarchy. Starting at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when ideas of European superiority were not fixed, this book traces the formation of those ideas through proto-ethnographies, news pamphlets, Habsburg court culture, gifts of treasure, and the organization of collections"--

Contents

Part I. Categories of inclusion -- 1. Cultures and religions -- 2. Iberia after Convivencia? -- 3. Aztec regalia and the reformation of treasure -- Part II. Experiments of exclusion -- 4. Boundaries and cultures of diplomacy in central Europe -- 5. Imperial authority in an era of confessions -- 6. Collecting idolatry and the emergence of the exotic -- Conclusion. Categorical denials.