The global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700
Notes by Hanna Hodacs
Keynote speaker 1
Joan Pau Rubies
Ethnographical Knowledge and the birth of enlightened Universalism
On notions of difference in ethnography and the development of universalism as two contradictory and
complementary strands.
Some groups of people, e.g. Hottentots, Haitians, have had a “un-proportional” influence on Europe’s
understanding of natives, and the context in which they have been understood is important to how they
been perceived, e.g. as noble savages or brutes.
Distinctions between Christian and civilised, also important, e.g. Chinese, Roman, Greeks, Japanese.
Note however the existence of “Christian others” in Asia and the influence of the Catholic Missionary
movements, particularly the Jesuits but also the Franciscans.
Debates that shaped travel accounts and ethnography:
1) Colonial intensions
2) Understandings of Natural Law (notions of reasoning, hierarchy of civilisation (“end game” in
this discussion).
3) Despotism (“end game”)
4) Religion (chronology of the Bible, but also the development of Universal history questioning the
authority of the Bible).
Conclusion:
The European notion of Universalism was the result of an interest in diversity (among other things) and
this interest in diversity, in ethnography, is strongly reflected in travel writing. There is a development
over time, the discussion became more Eurocentric, and as there was a growing demand for systematic
research, ethnographic and anthropological studies.
Session 1C: Information, Communication and Dutch Expansion.
Alexander Bick (Princeton)
“We dare not to stick our noses outside the Forte” Commercial Intelligence, State Policy and the 1645
Revolt in Dutch Brazil.
Questions at the forefront of the paper:
How did colonial news and information circulate within the Dutch Republic?
How could this information be manipulated?
The paper was about how news from Brazil, the Dutch West India Company’s domain, was circulated
looking particularly at the revolt in 1645 during a period of 8 days. Generally very few sources, however,
some protocols from the meetings of WIC and some private papers from Johannes de Lait, a Leiden
scholar with financial interests, and administrative positions within the WIC, handled the news about
this outbreak. The paper discussed how fast the news spread and how different accounts of what
happened was circulated. The different accounts can be explained looking at the interest of the
company, e.g. appeal military support, or support from share holders and private investor. Johannes de
Leit was a “information master”.
Margareta Schotte, Princeton.
A Sailor’s delight, Dutch Navigational Textbooks and Information Overload.
On how navigational skills and knowledge was transmitted, tacit knowledge, memory tricks (songs, sea
shanties, zodiac poems, using the fingers, hand tattoos?), text books, star charts, and the growing role of
mathematics and instruments. Memorizing declined as mathematical knowledge became more
important, a professionalization process which also contributed to a move away from production of
navigational knowledge among navigators, they became consumers of knowledge. Very nice paper and a
very nice speaker.
Dr Susanne Friedrich (Munich)
Le Maire contra VOC: how a conflict between two trading companies affected the dissemination of
knowledge
On the tension between how VOC defined their monopoly in terms of their exclusive right to use certain
trading routes, rather than geographical land masses. And what happened when the Le Mair company
(the Australian company) attempted to reach Asia by crossing the Atlantic in the 1610s and going south
of Latin America, claiming to have found new routes to previously un-explored areas (in terms of trade),
and how VOC tried to suppress the knowledge of these new routes, but also how some information was
transmitted and published in other European countries.
Session 3A: Networks of Travel
Dr Anna Winterbottom (Sussex)
Monsters and men of the woods, illustration and interpretation in seventeenth and early eighteenth
century natural history
The paper came across as quite unfinished, it was about reports of Monsters by Camelli, reports that
also contained a great deal of more conservative natural history, in the Philippines, and how these were
reported back to the Royal Society; but also on how monster reporting declined during the course of the
18th century. Added to that was a discussion of local Philippine mythology about the Tikebalang, and
how this mythology was coloured by encounters with Jesuits, the use of new colonial goods and
practices, e.g. tobacco, and slavery, (i.e. response in local folklore to the outside influence). The end bit
was about the Orang-utans and how they informed European understanding of the Man of the Woods.
The paper was a bit disparate, and lacked a clear conclusion.
Dr Emma Spary, Cambridge
Writing about coffee in France before 1700: travelling scholars and the “invisible network” of Philip
Sylvester Dufour.
This was a great paper; I think it is based on a book soon to be published titled “Eating the
Enlightenment” which I think we should include in the reading lists for the course. The context is the
effect of globalisation on eating, looking at coffee, but a bit on tea and chocolate as well. The broad
point was that while the late 17th century coffee consumption took place against a backdrop of
fascination with Oriental, Ottoman culture, which could include dressing in Turkish outfits while
consuming coffee, the beginning of the 18th century, with the increase of Coffee now imported from the
West Indies, “de-orientalised” the consumption of Coffee (there was no clear cultural connotations
associated with this West Indian Coffee). Points were also made about the link between protestant
consumption of coffee and Catholic consumption of chocolate. There was a discussion about the
Merchant Defour’s writing on Coffee, and his connection with Republic of Letter, his network, and how
Coffee drinking and Coffee houses, and the Republic of Letter all joins up.
Heidi Hausse (Princeton)
Cholera, Botany, and Authorial Authority in the East Indies
This paper was maybe less interesting, the end point seems to be about the common conception that
local deceases being best cured by local remedies, but also something about the dynamics between
European medics and local medics, and how the former referred patients to the latter, but also about
how medical knowledge was certified in Europe.
Keynote Lecture 2
Prof. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
The global renaissance
This was a very entertaining lecture, that went on a bit, which ultimately claimed that there was no
Italian Renaissance, and that scholarship that emphasised the Oriental, Islamic influence over this period
is wrong, if there ever was a Renaissance, the way it has defined, it took place in the 19th century!
Session 4B: Scholars abroad
Dr Simon Mills (Council for British Research in the Levant)
The Chaplains to the English Levant Company at Aleppo (1625-1695): Mapping the Geography and
Antiquities of Syria in Seventeenth Century England
As the title suggest this was about how Chaplain’s for the Levant Company explored the Middle East, it
described the support of the company, encouraging this research and how manuscripts and artefacts
was shipped home, but was mainly about the exploration of Palmyra by different expedition. And how
the results from these expeditions, finally in the 18th century lead to a de-ciphering of local dead
languages. The term “Scientific Antiquarianism”, established by Bruce Trigger, in History of
Archaeological Thought, was interesting, as well as the underlining of the importance of diplomatic and
ecclesiastical structures to the history of British exploration of the middle east.
Prof. Florence C. Hsia (Wisconsin-Madison)
Missionary, mathematician, Jesuit, spy: the limits of going native
Good paper! On the tension between Jesuit knowledge of Asia and other accounts, in this case the
“fake” native, George Psalmanazaar (and his biography published in London in 1703), particularly on the
status of Jesuit information, being coloured by the ambiguous identities of Jesuits, as the latter to a
certain extent “went native”, but also as Catholic produced information among protestant nations.
Dr. Ana Carolina Hosne (EUI, Florence) and Dr Pablo Ariel Blitstein, Institut National des Langues et
Civlisation, Paris
Letterati, shi: what’s in a name? Reflection on the concept of letterati and its circulation throughout the
Early Modern World to late Ming China (note the title is slightly different from the one in the program,
excludes the Latin American history)
On Matteo Ricci’s conception of the Italian Letterati, which I think they claimed showed signs of having
been influenced by Giovanni Andrea Gilio, and how he applied this on the neo-confusian administrators,
administrators in late Ming China, and the influence stemming from Plato’s Republic (notions of
meritocracy). And how this merging of ideas in return influenced the European audience in their
understanding of China. Very broad paper and it was suggested to me, giving Ricci too much credit for
having influenced the Chinese.
Keynote Lecture 3:
Prof. Pamela Smith (Colombia University): The movement of knowledge in the Early Modern World.
A very broad and partially very interesting paper. The paper had two parts, firstly the pigment Vermilion,
how it was made, and how knowledge about it travelled, and its significance in mythology, medicine and
alchemy, secondly, on the general travelling of knowledge globally (relating to crops such as maize,
peanuts, and materials such as paper, gun powder, luxury goods (that is us!), hunting traditions, tax
systems). This included not only knowledge, or science, but techniques and technologies (see Francesca
Bray’s definition of these terms). The paper also discussed how material culture can compensate for the
absence of written source material relating to this transfer (for the medieval and early modern period).
There was also a criticism of the narrow definition of science, either using the 17th century notion of the
Scientific revolution or the even narrower definition of the Science which locates its birth in the 19th
century. Smith was for example pointing at the understanding of the Golf stream among whalers which
predates Benjamin Franklins “discovery” of it. I.e. there is a “deep history” and a partially lost history of
knowledge that is hidden in skills, objects and text traditionally not discussed by historians of science.
Reference here to Neil Safier: Global Knowledge on the Move: Itineraries, Amerindian Narratives, and
Deep Histories of Science, Isis March 2010, 101:1, Focus: Global Histories of Science (or he referred to
his own writing on this in the discussion).
Plenary Session: Oceans, Knowledge and Empire
Prof. Nicolás Wey-Gómez (California Institute of Technology)
Passage to India: Europe’s quest for the tropics in the age of exploration
The paper explored late 15th century notions of geography, and how Portugal and Spain competed
support from the papal chair to gain monopoly over areas hitherto unexplored.
Prof. Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia)
The Pacific Ocean: The missing Link in Hispanic Globalisation
The paper discussed 16th century conception of the Pacific, juxtapositioning the Spanish (“optimistic”)
version (e.g. downplaying the vast distances and filling it with islands which one could conquer and lay in
with provision) to other’s which emphasized its vastness (as well as a discussion of the objective
differences between the relatively easily navigated Atlantic and the problems navigating the Pacific).
Added to that there was a discussion about between how the Pacific was conceptualised by Spaniards
located in Mexico, how from their point of view the Pacific was a western “lake” or basin, while to the
Europeans it was a route to the East. The concept “South Sea” was also discussed. Padrón also
discussed differences between scholarly American interests in the transpacific and European interest in
the Eurasian paths, both underlying the growing interest in Chinese influence.
Dr. Michiel van Groesen (University of Amsterdam)
An Ocean of rumours: the Atlantic world and the quest for reliable information in early modern Europe.
This was a great paper, from a guy who I hope we can have more contact with. His focus was on printed
news about Atlantic trade, particularly the uprising in Brazil, and the arrival of the Treasure fleet, in two
news papers, one in Republic, Amsterdam, (edited by Jan van Hilten ) and one printed the Southern
Netherlands (Antwerp) by Abraham Verhoeven. He highlighted how news was reported differently due
to political reasons (van Hilten’s repeatedly stating “nothing is certain”. He also discussed the reception
of news using a diary by a merchant close to Amsterdam, Pieter Conreliszoon, illustrating how critical
early modern merchant read news (anticipating that there was a fair amount of propaganda there,
particularly in the Antwerp newspaper where the editor had to take into consideration the official
stance of the Habsburgers and their political interest in downplaying negative news).
The most important part of the paper from our point of view (I think) was how he emphasised the
“Rhythm of the Atlantic news”, Jan-April, a “no news” season, May-September, “hard news” (i.e. a lot of
news) and October to December (“aftermath”). He talked about the “culture of anticipation or delay”
when it came to news. He also said there was very little news (or none) on the East India trade in these
newspapers, rather the Atlantic news dominated.
I talked to him afterwards, told him about my interest in reports on news about the arrival of East India
goods, to Europe, and news about auctions (which he said he thought no one in the Netherlands was
working on), and why it was so little news about this in the 17th century. He said that the political
tensions between Southern Netherlands and the Republic might have had an impact. There is of course
also a difference between protestant and catholic newspaper traditions here.
Round table Discussion
Peter Burke and Pamela H. Smith
Burke suggested some categories for how to understand knowledge(s), transmission and periods:
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imperial knowledge (administrative)
missionary knowledge
mercantile knowledge
maritime knowledge
medical knowledge
scholarly knowledge
and how they were isolated or were produced interactively.
He also discussed transmission and circulation, which could fall into different categories or understood
in different ways:
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geography, paths, long distances intercontinental (which was what most people had been
discussing) but also short distances.
obstacles (physical, hierarchical, cultural and language based, and political)
vehicles (media of communication, oral, pictorial, object), he also highlighted the degree to
which scholarship now have broadened their investigations, including not only texts but also
objects and pictures etc.)
reception (readers, viewers, misunderstandings, conscious adaptations and unintended ditto).
Periods, early modern period, when does it start or end, what does this label imply which can restrict or
enhance our understanding.
Smith, discussed the historiography of global knowledge, building on previous discussions, including a
remark by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, that the interwar period, in France, produced scholarly work on
global knowledge, and against that backdrop where does our interest in global knowledge stem from.
End discussion:
The concept of Eurasia tend to focus on the extremities, i.e. Europe and China, but there is little interest
in the central, e.g. Russia, the term “Flyover states”: American term for states in the middle, and the
importance of the East and the West coast, “bi-costalism” were mentioned in this discussion, no real
attempt to how we should grasp with the neglected areas but with more research.
There was also an adjunct discussion about how the focus on maritime travel (the isolating effect of
water travelling), with notions of the trackless sea, where little was to be learned between ports, helped
to reinforce the “flyover” tendency. Although some rightly also highlighted that log books, with daily
notes, also produced knowledge, albeit of a different kind, than travelling by land.
More importantly to us was also the claim that economic historians have a much longer tradition of
discussing globalisation of knowledge, and that now, these historians (and here our project of course
belong) have started to pay more attention to culture. However this strand of research has partially
become stuck in the Needham “Why Europe” question.