The global reach of the Spanish and Portuguese empires prompted a remarkable flourishing of the classical rhetorical tradition in various parts of the early modern world. Empire of Eloquence is the first study to examine this tradition as part of a wider global renaissance in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa, with a particular focus on the Iberian world. Spanning the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the book argues that the classical rhetorical tradition contributed to the ideological coherence and equilibrium of this early modern Iberian world, providing important occasions for persuasion, legitimation and eventual (and perhaps inevitable) confrontation. Drawing on archival collections in thirteen countries, Stuart M. McManus places these developments in the context of civic, religious and institutional rituals attended by the multi-ethnic population of the Iberian world and beyond, and shows how they influenced public speaking in non-European languages, such as Konkani and Chinese.

‘There can be little question that the author has succeeded in illustrating the many ways in which a meta-geographical study such as this one can add to our understanding of how a cultural phenomenon such as classical rhetoric was once able to span the globe … The volume concludes with a list of archives visited, as well as an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources that will certainly be of great value to anyone who wishes to pursue this subject further.’

Carl P. E. Springer Source: Neo-Latin News

'… this book makes a significant contribution to scholarship by attending to an understudied aspect of early modern imperialism … It will be important reading for intellectual historians of colonial Latin America and the early modern Iberian world.'

Ralph Bauer Source: Hispanic American Historical Review