"Individually, the essays have a strong archival base, clear focus and fascinating detail. Following the guide of the last essay, this volume includes many illustrations—a visual reminder of scientific advances. As a group, they demonstrate that science helped build and shape the empires as much as the bureaucrats and merchants of the colonial period. For scholars and students of Latin American, American and European history, as well as the history of medicine, this is a valuable starting-point for understanding how science and technology were integral to the economy and expanding empires by improving transportation, mining, medicine and other technologies."—Marianne Samayoa, Social History of Medicine

"Outstanding contributions include that on Nieremberg by Juan Pimentel, who shows the compatibility of his subject's religious and scientific thinking; Paula De Vos's entertaining account of an eighteenth-century bishop's cabinet of curiosities; and Anna More's demonstration of how personal circumstances affected the scientific vision of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora."—Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Hispanic American Historical Review

"This Volume makes a strong case for re-shaping of history of science in the early modern period."—Liam Matthew Brockey, Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

"This excellent volume of essays brings together a wide variety of scholars from a variety of disciplines, countries, and continents- art historians, literary scholars, and historians based in the United Stated, Spain, Northern Ireland, Brazil. Portugal, and England."—Marshall C. Eakin, The Americas

"Treating science in the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the early modern period, this volume offers a stellar collection of papers that guide readers to primary source materials as well as the newest scholarship in the field." —Londa Schiebinger, Stanford University