"Scholars and students alike owe a debt of gratitude to academics like Kutzinski [and] Ette. . . who draw on research and analytical and linguistic skills to open up access to resources of significant figures in the histories of science and cartography. With full access to the text of the Political History on the Kingdom of New Spain and Humboldt’s manuscript drawings from his American travel diaries, contemporary scholars may voyage as armchair travellers and advance research projects as they rest on the erudition and talents of literary scholars who have studied Alexander von Humboldt and made his oeuvre accessible in form and content to a new generation."

Imago Mundi

"Humboldt transitions easily between statistics, physical science and political argumentation in a book whose many passions and perspectives continue to impress the reader two centuries later. This is a wonderful edition of a wonderful book by a wonderful mind that deserves far more attention from historical geographers, historians of science and colonial historians than it has hitherto received. Thanks to the exhaustive work of the project's editorial team, we now have no excuse for neglecting the riches of the Political Essay."

Journal of Historical Geography

"Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain: A Critical Edition, a two-volume translation of Humboldt’s Political Essay, corrects what they label as the 'inaccuracies, capricious alterations, and misrepresentations' in John Black’s 1811 English-language edition. Kutzinski and Ette add a new edition translated from the 1825 second revised French edition (1: p. ix). Published seventeen years later, this second edition captures a shifting society bridging colonial concerns to a republican counterpart."

H-Nationalism

"This superb new critical edition of Humboldt’s seminal work on Mexico is long overdue. It will become the authoritative edition of the Essai politique. The translators have succeeded in fashioning a text that is alert to the stylistic peculiarities of the original while being readable, clear, and in idiomatic English. This is quite a feat, given the complexity of Humboldt’s phrasing and the hybridity of his writing."

Alison E. Martin, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz/Germersheim

"An avid reader of Humboldt in French, Thomas Jefferson understood that the histories of New Spain (today’s Mexico) and the nascent United States would forever be intertwined. Now, thanks to the extraordinary translating and editing of Kutzinski, Ette, and their team, English-language readers can share Humboldt’s insights in a tour de force translation that is itself Humboldtian in scope."

Neil Safier, the John Carter Brown Library

"This edition of Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain aims to make the traveler’s works known to an English-speaking public. In their new edition, the translators have created an English text that avoids unnecessary modernizations and maintains Humboldt’s deliberately created structure. Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette’s informative and clear introduction reflects the latest in Humboldt research and will help orient readers interested in Humboldt’s American expedition, particularly in his work on Mexico, which includes the history of the indigenous peoples. This work is an outstanding contribution to current international Humboldt scholarship."

Ingo Schwarz, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

"Here, at last, is the monumental study of Mexican North America on the brink of independence that changed history and made Humboldt famous. The inimitable Humboldt ranges from Chile to Alaska to the future Panama Canal; from cartography and climate to human migration and tropical disease; from indigenous agriculture to slave plantations; from bananas and manioc to cotton and sugar; from whales and sea otters to cigars, coins, and gunpowder; from Aztec floating gardens to Spanish hydraulic engineering; and from Mexican silver mines to their world-shaking impact on global capitalism—until it seems nothing escapes his probing analysis and often scathing critique. This painstaking, definitive translation of Humboldt’s foundational work, a monument of scientific and humanist investigation into structures of power, conquest, empire, and resistance, belongs on the shelf of every serious scholar of the Americas and every student of modernity. That Humboldt’s great vision was corrupted and betrayed makes this work all the more important for our time."

Laura Dassow Walls, The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America

"This new translation of Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain is timely, given the growing interest in one of Europe’s last polymaths. It brings to our attention an indispensable but often overlooked opus, which Humboldt had already conceived during his stay in Mexico in 1803–1804. The Essay offers no less than an embarrassment of riches. Humboldt manages to combine in-depth explorations and statistical analyses of Spain’s most prosperous colonial territory with wide-angle views and surprising comparisons. The man from Prussia demonstrates his sensitivity toward the indigenous traditions of the Americas and the variety of natural and cultural spaces he enters, indefatigably absorbing every bit of information. Connecting the dots—between agriculture, silver mining, and transoceanic trade; between climate and plant growth; between the history of the brutal colonization and demographic developments—is Humboldt’s forte. This capacity and Humboldt’s open-mindedness deserve our recognition today. This beautiful new edition will serve not only as an illustration of how modern-style political geography came into existence but also as guide to the multifaceted thinking of a traveler and scholar who transcended cultural divides and borders set by hegemonic powers."

Andreas W. Daum, State University of New York at Buffalo

“The translation is based on the second, revised French version of 1825-27 and surpasses all previous foreign-language renderings: it is linguistically elegant, does justice to Humboldt’s terminology, and applies great precision in retaining the original tables… This edition constitutes a milestone in the current process of rediscovering the indefatigable researcher from Prussia: it makes a largely forgotten opus accessible and allow us to re-examine Humboldt’s analysis of society.”
 

Dynamis