Business of Alchemy

Pamela Smith explores the relationships among alchemy, the court, and commerce in order to illuminate the cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In showing how an overriding concern with religious salvation was transformed into a concentration on material increase and economic policies, Smith depicts the rise of modern science and early capitalism. This narrative focuses on the life of Johann Joachim Becher (1635SL1682), an intellectual whose ideas typify those of a generation, and traces his career from university to court, his projects from New World colonies to an old-world Pansophic Panopticon, and his ideas from alchemy to economics. A fine study of the relation between alchemy and commerce in the German-speaking lands of the later seventeenth century. . . . It is a mark of Smith's success that she lucidly conveys the radical implications of Becher's projects in the face of existing scholarship, which sees him merely as one of the crowd.--Simon Schaffer, London Review of Books Spirited and fascinating. . . . This blending of the modern with the traditional, this seamless knitting of commerce with princely extravagance, alchemy with science, commerce, and industry, stands as the major achievement of Smith's portrait of intellectual life in the late-seventeenth-century Hapsburg territories.--Margaret C. Jacob, American Historical ReviewSmith, Pamela H. is the author of 'Business of Alchemy' with ISBN 9780691056913 and ISBN 0691056919.