The Encounter of Two Worlds: Jesuit Knowledge and the Making of Hybrid Epistemologies in the Early Modern Atlantic World

The encounter between America and Europe provoked the emergence of the Atlantic World, that brought profound changes in every corner of the globe. The numerous first-hand accounts that returned to Europe contributed to how its intellectuals imagined remote regions, filling the gaps with their own idiosyncrasies. This research examines European imaginary constructions of the New World during the early colonial period, focusing on knowledge production by Jesuit intellectuals. Through the analysis of the works of José de Acosta, Eusebio Kino, and Francisco Xavier Clavijero, the study reveals that mestizaje was not a controllable or directable process, but rather a profound transformation that eventually generated a completely new and initially indescribable reality. The central argument of this research is that early European imaginaries arose because early modern scholars failed to adopt hybridity as a methodological framework for interpreting the new American reality. Their analysis, although acknowledging mestizaje to certain degrees—the caste system and syncretism—insisted on treating America and Europe as two separate entities that, despite contact, did not mix. This analysis produced a biased understanding of the relationship between both worlds and allowed the flourishing of interpretive dogmas despite the appearance of new evidence. This resistance to hybridity as an analytical framework was sustained through the discourse of providence, which Jesuit intellectuals deployed throughout the early modern period to justify Spanish presence in America. By framing colonization as a divine plan to save Indigenous souls, this providentialist discourse positioned Spanish culture as distinct and superior to Indigenous ones. This discourse consistently cast Europe as the motor of history rather than a subject of it, creating a conceptual barrier that prevented early modern scholars from recognizing the profound mutual transformation already underway. However, although at the discursive level Jesuit intellectuals denied any infiltration of Indigenous knowledge, the analysis shows that their works were constructed with substantial amounts of aforementioned knowledge. Not only that, but prolonged exposure to American realities substantially modified European theoretical and conceptual frameworks, altering the course of science. The force of mestizaje provoked—even in the face of resistance from early modern intellectuals—a hybrid epistemology in which these authors acted as mediators between two conflicting epistemologies defining the same space. Keywords: Mestizaje, Jesuit, epistemology, History of Science, early modern Latin America, Hybridity, Conquest.