Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

interests were adequately represented. Although there is little direct evidence, it is likely that De
Laet also facilitated correspondence and the exchange of information between the company and
the university. As Anthony Grafton has argued, Leiden was an urban campus, where university
and society as a whole “were locked together in a symbiosis that enriched both parties.” 137 The
concentration of books and manuscripts available in Leiden, along with the wide reading and
critical approach to sources that De Laet would have learned from Scaliger and others, were
crucial to his Neiuwe Wereldt. And the presence of a publisher like Elsevier, located only a few
doors down from De Laet’s house on the Rapenburg, helped transform both this book and the
Iaerlyck Verhael into prestigious, luxury editions for consumption by the Dutch elite. 138
Conversely, De Laet used his position in the company to furnish friends at the university with
natural and cultural specimens from all over the Western Hemisphere, a project that culminated
in the publication of Willem Piso (1611-1678) and Georg Markgraf’s (1610-c.1643)
sumptuously illustrated book on the flora and fauna of Brazil. 139 De Laet's status as an expert on
the New World was the collective product of his scholarly life in Leiden and his concrete
responsibilities as the city’s representative within the company, and each reinforced the other.
Our knowledge of De Laet's work within the Amsterdam chamber is limited by the
remaining sources, which include only a single volume (covering two years) of the chamber’s
minutes during the period that De Laet served as a director. 140 Nevertheless, these are sufficient
to paint a very persuasive picture of his activities. The chamber met every Monday and
Thursday, though occasionally meetings would be held on other days as well. In 1635 De Laet
137 Grafton, Bring Out Your Dead, 128.
138 The latter apparently was known as "one of the most prestigious books published by the firm Elsevier." Cited in
Bremmer Jr., “The Correspondence of Johannes De Laet as a Mirror on His Life,” 151.
139 Willem Piso, Georg Markgraf, and Johannes de Laet, Historia Natvralis Brasiliae [...]: in qua non tantum plantæ
et animalia, sed et indigenarum morbi, ingenia et mores describuntur et iconibus supra quingentas illustrantur
(Leiden: Franciscus Hackius, 1648).
140 NA 1.05.01.01, inv.nr. 14, Resoluties van de Camer Amsterdam, 1635-36.
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