Sensory Iberia: Exotica in the Material World of Don Juan de Borja

Sensory Iberia challenges the idea that early modern Iberians sought goods from distant lands simply because they were exotic, arguing that the notion of the “exotic” as an enticing category is a post-seventeenth-century construct. Don Juan de Borja y Castro was a Spanish courtier and diplomat who was closely associated with the House of Habsburg and occupied important positions at several European courts in the sixteenth century. During his lifetime, he amassed a remarkable number of non-European objects, from bedcovers and carpets from India to Chinese silks and porcelain, rhinoceros horns, trinkets made of elephant tusks, tortoiseshell caskets, and furniture made from tropical timber. Through a microhistorical analysis of this unique assemblage of non-European things, Sensory Iberia challenges the notion that Juan de Borja and other early modern Iberians sought goods from distant lands simply because they were exotic. The 'exotic' as an enticing category is a post-seventeenth-century construct, and instead the book shows how sensory experience shaped elite desires for objects from faraway regions. The author demonstrates how individual sensory engagement intersected with elite social practices, the administrative structures of the monarchy, and the commercial networks of the Portuguese and Spanish empires. Using inventories, correspondence, medical writings, literature, and other archival sources, and combining material culture studies, the history of consumption, and sensory history, this book thereby offers a new interpretation of the relationship between early modern Iberian elites and non-European things.