Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible. An Experiment in Microhistory

The lecture will present the life and writings of Jean-Pierre Purry, an early prophet of European expansion. Purry, a Calvinist born in Neuchâtel, spent most of his life in Amsterdam, Batavia, and Paris. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Purry submitted to the Board of Directors of the Company a colonization project based on his own geographical theories, as well as a highly original reading of the Bible. Ultimately Purry founded in South Carolina a city, which he named Purysburg, where he died in 1735. In the second part of the lecture the theoretical ambitions of microhistory will be illustrated on the basis of the case study. The larger implications of Purry's case will be unfolded arguing that microhistory – often regarded, more or less dismissively, as a vivid way of story-telling – has in fact definite theoretical potentialities.