The Archive of the Hakluyt Society at the British Library

We are delighted to announce that the archive of the Hakluyt Society is now catalogued as part of the India Office Private Papers and available to researchers at the British Library.  You can read more about the Society archive and its place in the BL’s collections on their Blog.

The archive contains papers relating to the running of the Society, including signed Council Minutes, Committee papers, administrative records and financial papers, and correspondence and other papers generated by the work of the Society’s various Honorary Secretaries. Descriptions of the archive can be found via the British Library’s Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue, and researchers can consult material in their Asian and African Studies Reading Room. 

Mss Eur F594/1/3-4: Hakluyt Society Council Minutes, 1965-1987.

A special thank you to Lesley Shapland, Cataloguer, India Office Records, for the detailed British Library Blog post about the Hakluyt Society Archive.

Book launch “Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World”, 25 March 2022

The Hakluyt Society is thrilled to invite you to the online book launch of Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World, the first volume in our new series Hakluyt Society Studies in the History of Travel. The launch will take place on Friday 25 March at 13.00-14.30 GMT. Attendance is free and all are welcome to attend. Please register to book your free ticket here.

Trading Companies and Travel Knowledge in the Early Modern World explores the multiple links between trade, empire, exploration, and global information transfer during the early modern period. By charting how the leaders, members, employees, and supporters of different trading companies gathered, processed, employed, protected, and divulged intelligence about foreign lands, peoples, and markets, the book throws new light on the internal uses of information by corporate actors and the ways they engaged with, relied on, and supplied various external publics. This ranged from using secret knowledge to beat competitors, to shaping debates about empire, and to forcing Europeans to reassess their understandings of specific environments due to contacts with non-European peoples. Reframing our understanding of trading companies through the lens of travel knowledge, this volume brings together thirteen experts in the field to facilitate a new understanding of how European corporations and empires were shaped by global webs of information exchange.

To celebrate the launch of this new volume, we will be joined by the book’s contributors, the editors of the volume, Aske Laursen Brock, Guido van Meersbergen, and Edmond Smith, and the series editors, Dan Carey and Joan-Pau Rubies. The launch event will feature comments from the President of the Hakluyt Society, Gloria Clifton, leading expert in the field, Claire Jowitt, and two of the book’s brilliant contributors, Jyotsna Singh and Amrita Sen.

Attendees can purchase the book using the 20% discount code FLR40 (e-book £29.59) and members of the Hakluyt Society can use a 40% discount code available in the member’s area of the Society’s website.

Programme: Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021 – Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches

10-12 November 2021
University of Warwick (online via Zoom)

(All times are GMT+0/UTC)

The Hakluyt Society, the Global History and Culture Centre (GHCC) at the University of Warwick, and Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs), invite you to the Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021 – Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches. Attendance is free and all are welcome.

To register, please email: hakluytsymposium2021@gmail.com

Contacts: Natalya Din-Kariuki (Natalya.Din-Kariuki@warwick.ac.uk) and Guido van Meersbergen (G.van-Meersbergen@warwick.ac.uk)

Day 1: Wednesday 10 November 2021

14.00-14.15: Introduction and Welcome (Natalya Din-Kariuki and Guido van Meersbergen)

14.15-15.45: Panel 1: Decolonising Travel Studies in Theory and Practice (Chair: Caitlin Vandertop)

  • Daniel Vitkus: “Racialized Capitalism, Intersectionality, and Early Modern Travel Studies”
  • Denise Saive Castro: “Contemplating Slavery on the African West Coast: A Comparison of Portuguese and Dutch Travel Accounts with the Correspondence of Nepemba Angiga, also known as Afonso I of Kongo”
  • Sander Molenaar: “Deconstructing the ‘Imperial Gaze’ in Chinese Travel Writing: A New Look at Ma Huan’s Ying ya sheng lan (Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores)”
  • Carl Thompson: “Conjectures on Travel Writing as World Literature”

15.45-16.00: Break

16.00-17.15: Panel 2: Travel and Decolonisation Today (Chair: Ladan Niayesh)

  • Sandhya Patel: “Peopling the Pitt Rivers Cook-Voyage Collections on the World Wide Web”
  • R. Benedito Ferrão: “The Black Antarctic: Decoloniality and Queer Ecology in Mojisola Adebayo’s Moj of the Antarctic
  • Joanne Lee: “All Roads Lead to Africa: Decolonizing the Imperial City”

17.15-17.30: Break

17.30-19.00: Panel 3: Images and Imaginations: Visual and Cartographic Sources (Chair: Daniel Carey)

  • Farah Bazzi: “Seeing the ‘Maghreb’ by Looking at the Americas: Rethinking the Transmission of Cartographic Knowledge in the Ottoman World through the Piri Reis Map of 1513”
  • Louise McCarthy: “Cartographic Silence and Muted Voices: Reading the Subtexts of British Maps of Early Colonial Virginia (1606-1624)
  • Sara Caputo: “Travels Carved on the Pathless Ocean: European Ship Tracks and (De)colonial Mobility”
  • Apurba Chatterjee: “Travel, Visuality, and the British Indian Empire: James Baillie Fraser in the Himalayas”

Day 2: Thursday 11 November 2021

09.30-10.45: Roundtable 1: Decolonial Approaches to British Sources and Archives by TIDE (Chair: Nandini Das)

  • Speakers: Haig Smith, Lauren Working, Emily Stevenson, and Tom Roberts

10.45- 11.15: Break

11.15- 12.15: Roundtable 2: Decolonising Travel Studies: A Student-led Conversation by participants of the Warwick Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (Chair: Guido van Meersbergen)

  • Speakers: Chhaya Rai, Nida Mahmud, Kevin Molloy, Declan Dadzie

12.15-12.30: Publishing with the Hakluyt Society: What and How?

  • Speaker: Katherine Parker

12.30-13.15 Lunch break

13.15-14.30 Panel 4: Black Travellers in the Twentieth Century: Oppression and Liberation (Chair: Dexnell Peters)

  • Kiranpreet Kaur: “Eslanda Robeson’s Congo Diary”
  • Zachary Peterson: “Africans in America and Americans in Africa: The American Committee on Africa, its Travels to the Continent, and its Sponsorship of African Travelers to the US”
  • Janet Remmington: “Navigating Apartheid: Black Women Travelling”

14.30-14.45: Break

14.45-16.00: Panel 5: New Sources, Genres, and Perspectives (Chair: Julia Kuehn)

  • Judith E. Bosnak: “Javanese Language Travelogues as ‘New’ Sources for the History of Travel”
  • Gábor Gelléri: “Colonial Tourism, De-centered”
  • Ettore Morelli: “The Diary of Morena Abraham Aaron Moletsane mor’a Moroa-ha-a-buse, 1952: African Traveller and Historian”

16.00-16.30: Break

16.30-18.00: Keynote lecture: “Travelling While Black” (Chair: Natalya Din-Kariuki; introduction by Gloria Clifton, Hakluyt Society President).

Speaker: Nanjala Nyabola

Author of Travelling While Black (2020)

Day 3: Friday 12 November 2021

09.30-10.45: Roundtable 3: Decolonial Orientations: Travel Studies and the Pre-Modern Islamic Worldby Medieval and Early Modern Orients (Chair: Hassana Moosa)

  • Speakers: Lubaaba Al-Azami, Amrita Sen, Maria Shmygol, and Nat Cutter

10.45-11.15: Break

11.15-12.30: Panel 6: Recovering Indigenous Voices (Chair: Joan-Pau Rubiés)

  • Zoltán Biedermann: “Seeing the Invisible Hand: Retrieving Indigenous Agency from Early Iberian Travel Accounts, c.1500”
  • Lucas Aleixo Pires dos Reis & Roberth Daylon: “‘Foods that are self-served’: Methodologies for the Study of Unstated African Presences in Travel Accounts”
  • Anna Melinda Testa-De Ocampo: “Alexander Dalrymple and the Natural Curiosities in Sooloo (1770)”

12.30-13.30: Lunch break

13.30-14.45: Panel 7: South Asian Travellers, Religion, and Transnationalism (Chair: Somak Biswas)

  • Daniel Majchrowicz: “Muslim Women and Travel Writing: Rediscovering a Forgotten Archive”
  • Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil: “‘Connected Stories’ of Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca: Decolonizing the Travel Writing through South Asian Hajj Narratives”
  • Nupur Bandyopadhyay: “A Journey to Justice: Transnational Civil Rights and Ramnath Biswas, an Indian Globetrotter from Bengal, 1937-40”

14.45-15.15 Break

15.15-16.30: Panel 8: Reorienting Travel Studies: Perspectives from Europe’s Fringes (Chair: Eva Johanna Holmberg)

  • Sharyl Corrado: “Evgeniia Maier (1865-1951): Noblewoman and Nomad”
  • Janne Lahti: “Settler Colonial Eyes in Unexpected Places: Finnish Travel Writers and Settler Colonization on the Arctic Ocean”
  • Nadiya Chushak: “‘First female travel blogger’: Sofiya Yablonska-Oudin’s Works and their Perception in Contemporary Ukraine”

16.30-16.45 Break

16.45-18.00: Roundtable 4: Decolonising Travel Studies in the Classroom (Chair: Natalya Din-Kariuki and Eva Johanna Holmberg)

  • Speakers: Nandini Das, Jyotsna Singh, Nedda Mehdizadeh, and Gerald Maclean

18.00: CONFERENCE ENDS

Programme (pdf)

CFP – The Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021: Decolonising Travel Studies

The Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021

Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches

11-12 November 2021

University of Warwick (online)

Deadline for submissions: 1 July 2021

Keynote: Nanjala Nyabola, Author of Travelling While Black (2020)

Call for Papers

The close links between travel and European colonialism have long been acknowledged. Since the early modern period, forms of global travel and exploration have often produced and reflected unequal structures of power: between those who chose to travel and those forced to, those who claimed lands and those whose lands were claimed, and those whose voices were amplified and others whose voices were erased. Post-colonial, feminist, and other critiques have exposed the inequalities inherent in the history of travel, whilst increased attention to women travellers and travel writing in Arabic, Persian, Chinese and other languages is changing the ways in which this history is written. Nonetheless, for reasons of institutional culture and the availability and accessibility of sources, the academic study of travel remains largely skewed towards the accounts and perspectives of European men from a small number of former imperial nations.

To mark the Hakluyt Society’s 175th anniversary, the Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021 aims to take stock of the historiography on global travel and exploration and reflect on what a decolonised history of travel looks like in theory and practice. Hosted by the University of Warwick’s Global History and Culture Centre (GHCC), the online symposium will bring together students and academics working across historical periods in an interdisciplinary conversation around the sources, approaches, and perspectives required to decolonise the field. Abstracts (max. 300 words) are invited for 15-minute papers that engage with one or more of the following:

  • The historical development of and colonial legacies contained in travel and exploration studies, including primary source editions such as the 380+ volumes published by the Hakluyt Society since 1847.
  • Empirical case studies of underrepresented histories of travel, particularly those that focus on BIPOC, women, and/or LQBTQ+ travellers and perspectives.
  • The politics of the archive, and the ways in which particular methodologies have rendered certain demographics (women of colour, unfree people and disabled people, for instance) absent or invisible in the histories of colonialism and travel.
  • The theory and practice of decolonisation as it pertains to the history of travel, particularly with the aim of identifying future directions for the discipline.
  • Unpublished sources for the history of travel, ideally those which might be proposed for editing within the Hakluyt Society’s Third Series.

Please submit your abstracts and a brief biographical note to hakluytsymposium2021@gmail.com by 1 July 2021. Early career researchers and postgraduate students are particularly encouraged to apply.

Organising committee: Natalya Din-Kariuki (University of Warwick, English) and Guido van Meersbergen (University of Warwick, History). Download CFP.

Call for Papers: The Hakluyt Society Symposium 2021 – Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches. 11-12 November 2021, University of Warwick (online). Deadline for submissions: 1 July 2021. More info at: https://hakluytsociety.wordpress.com/2021/05/17/cfp-the-hakluyt-society-symposium-2021-decolonising-travel-studies/

Hakluyt Society Symposium 2019: Registration now open!

Registration for the upcoming Hakluyt Society Symposium: ‘Rethinking Power in Maritime Encounters, 1400-1900’ is now open!

Date: 5-6 September 2019

LocationP.J. Veth, Nonnensteeg 1-3, 2311 VJ Leiden. Room 1.01.

Please register via this link before 1 September 2019. The full registration fee is €50. The fee for Hakluyt Society Members and Linschoten-Vereeniging members is €25. Lunch and tea/coffee will be provided on both days. Hakluyt Society Student Members attend the symposium for free, and should register by emailing hakluytleiden2019@gmail.com (please include your membership number in your email). To become a Hakluyt Society (student) member, follow the instructions here.

Practical information

If you need accommodation in Leiden during the symposium, we can offer a special conference rate of 85 euros per night, including WIFI and breakfast, at the IBIS hotel. This hotel is located close to the railway station and is a 10-15 minute walk from the symposium venue. For those who want to go local, the hotel also rents out bikes for the duration of your stay! We advise contacting the hotel early with your travel plans. Please book by email (h8087@accor.com) with “Universiteit Leiden” in the subject line, stating that you are booking for the symposium.

The conference will be held in the University’s recently restored P.J. Veth building overlooking the Botanical Gardens. The botanical gardens are the oldest in The Netherlands (1590) and we do encourage attendees to take a quick tour over one of the lunch breaks. All breaks will be on site; the drinks receptions and the conference dinner will be within easy walking distance from the venue. If you have any mobility or dietary concerns, or any other questions, please  do get in touch via hakluytleiden@gmail.com.

Programme

Find the full programme here.

We look forward to welcoming you in Leiden!

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CALL FOR PAPERS: Captain Cook After 250 Years

‘Captain Cook after 250 years: Re-exploring The Voyages of James Cook’

An International Conference on Captain James Cook’s voyages (1768-1779)
Organised by the SELVA, the Hakluyt Society, HDEA and VALE, supported by LARCA
7-8 February 2020
Sorbonne Université

 

Call for papers

Welcoming the presence of Captain James Cook’s voyages (1768-1779) on the syllabus for the French competitive exam of the agrégation in 2020, the SELVA (Society for the study of Anglophone travel literature), the Hakluyt Society (editor of primary records of historic voyages, travels and other geographical material), HDEA (Histoire et Dynamique des Espaces Anglophones, EA 4086), and VALE (Voix Anglophones: Littérature et Esthétique, EA 4085) will be organising, with the support of LARCA (UMR 8225, CNRS, University of Paris Dideerot) an international conference to be held at Sorbonne Université on Friday 7 February (all day) and Saturday 8 February (in the morning) 2020, Amphithéâtre Georges Molinié, Maison de la Recherche, rue Serpente, Paris.

The Penguin edition that provides the textbook for the students (James Cook, The Journals, ed. Philip Edwards [1999], Penguin Classics, 2003, 646 p) is based on the four-volume edition of Cook’s Journals published by the Hakluyt Society.

Paper proposals may be on (but are not limited to):

  • the link between Cook’s voyages, the discovery of new territories and cartography
  • the historical impact of his discoveries; the role and impact of voyages in the construction of the British Empire;
  • other exploration travels that took place in the 1770s, such as Joseph Banks’ travels to Iceland through the Hebrides in 1772 or Phipps’ in the Arctic Ocean in 1773. In France, Bougainville went on his world tour in 1766 and published his Voyage autour du monde in 1771.
  • the influence of colonial discourses and the economic aims of sea expeditions; the profit-motivated voyages of privateers like Woodes Rogers earlier on in the century (A Cruising Voyage round the World, 1712); the realization that capitalism and mercantilism were only possible by seizing the wealth overseas; the development of overseas commerce;
  • the status of voyagers (geographers? scientists? ethnographers? writers?);
  • the technological and scientific dimensions of Cook’s expeditions;
  • the different kinds of people on board: botanists, naturalists, scientists, artists etc.
  • the aesthetic and literary dimensions of Cook’s Journals: for example, William Hodges, an artist on board with James Cook during his second voyage, was the author of a number of drawings and paintings such as A View taken in the Bay of Oaite Peha Otaheite (1773). His productions had to be very accurate as geographical documents, but they also had an aesthetic dimension;
  • philosophical developments on the “bon sauvage” in Britain and France (Diderot);
  • the reception, translation and edition of Cook’s writings.

An on-line peer-reviewed publication will follow and the articles will have to be submitted very shortly after the conference.
Please send your proposals (title + 15-line summary, preferably in English), along with a short bio-bibliographical note, to Emmanuelle Peraldo (Emmanuelle.PERALDO@univ-cotedazur.fr), Pierre Lurbe (pierrelurbe@gmail.com), and Ladan Niayesh (niayesh@univ-paris-diderot.fr) before Monday 30 September 2019.

Members of the organising and scientific committee:
Jim Bennett, President of the Hakluyt Society;
Emmanuelle Peraldo, Université de Nice, CTEL (EA 6307), President of the SELVA;
Pierre Lurbe, Faculté des Lettres, Sorbonne Université, HDEA (EA 4086), International Representative of the Hakluyt Society for France;
Ladan Niayesh, Université Paris, Diderot LARCA (UMR 5882, CNRS), Hakluyt Society Council Member;
Anne-Florence Quaireau, Faculté des Lettres, Sorbonne Université, VALE (EA 4085), Secretary of the SELVA.

Programme: Hakluyt Society Symposium 2019 – Rethinking Maritime Encounters

Hakluyt Society Symposium 2019: “Rethinking Power in Maritime Encounters”, Leiden, 5-6 September 2019

Organised by the Hakluyt Society in collaboration with Leiden University’s Institute of History, the Linschoten-Vereeniging, and Itinerario

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Thursday 5 September

08:00 – 8:30 registration / welcome

08:30 – 10:20 panel 1 [Labour Relations]

  1. Pepijn Brandon – ‘Varieties of Force: Experiments in Coerced Labour on Naval Shipyards During the Industrial Revolution’
  2. Maria Vann – ‘“The Bloomer Controlled the Whole of Us:” The Dichotomy of Female Slave Ship Owners and Maritime Women as Agents of Power’
  3. Richard Blakemore – ‘The Meanings of Mutiny in Early Modern Seafaring’
  4. Leonardo Moreno Alvarez – ‘Fraudsters, Grifters, and Divers: The Logistics of Labor and Silver Transportation in the Spanish Caribbean, late 1650s’

10:20 – 10:50 coffee/tea break

10:50 – 12:40 panel 2 [Emancipation and Mobility]

  1. Kevin Dawson – ‘Free and Enslaved Ship Pilots in the Age of Revolutions’
  2. Gina G. Bennett – ‘“Service for Me and Mine in Another Land”: Scotland’s Women and Maritime Strategies of the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World’
  3. Rafaël Thiébaut – ‘The Role of Pirates, Women and the Slave Trade in the Creation of the Betsimisaraka Kingdom (1685-1809)’
  4. Timothy D. Walker – ‘Sailing to Freedom in the Antebellum USA: Enslaved Seaport/ Coastal Laborers, the Whaling Industry, and Rethinking the Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad’

12:40 – 13:40 lunch

13:40 – 15:30 panel 3 [Indigenous Knowledge and Agency]

  1. Mariana Françozo – ‘Negotiating Power and Knowledge: Natural History Practices in Dutch Brazil’
  2. Nathaniel Holly – ‘The Power of “Patrick Cherryman”: Cherokees on the Waves of the Atlantic’
  3. Esther Baakman – ‘Formidable Allies, Dangerous Foes: Native Americans in the European Press’
  4. Sebastian Hepburn-Roper – ‘Taonga Trading Posts: Coastal Settlements and Firearms Trade in early Nineteenth-Century New Zealand’

15:30 – 15:50 coffee/tea break

15:50-16:00 Hakluyt Society Essay Prize presentation – James Taylor

16:00 – 17:00 keynote: Josh Reid – ‘Indigenous Explorers & the Making of Pacific Worlds, 1786-1890’

17:00 drinks (sponsored by Itinerario)

19:00 dinner (speakers; registered participants at own expense)


Friday 6 September

08:30 – 10:20 panel 4 [Global Empires and Trans-Oceanic Connections]

  1. Sujit Sivasundaram – ‘Explorers, Monarchs and Empire in the Pacific’s Age of Revolutions’
  2. Kevin P. McDonald – ‘Babbo and the Breadfruit: Pacific Islanders and the Anglo-Imperial Imaginary, ca. 1789’
  3. Marília Arantes Silva Moreira – ‘Antoine Larcher’s ‘Project of Expedition to Salvador (Brazil) 1797’ and the Global Competition for the South Atlantic during the Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802)’
  4. Amarendra Kumar – ‘Negotiating ‘Territoriality of the Sea’: The Maratha Navy in the Era of Global Maritime Empires’

10:20 – 10:40 coffee/tea break

10:40 – 12:30 panel 5 [Piracy in the Atlantic World]

  1. Claire Jowitt – ‘Pirate Marts: Economic Warfare, Price Cuts, and Popular Politics’
  2. Tim Soriano – ‘Buccaneers into Baymen: British Rule in British Honduras 1570–1765’
  3. Elizabeth Montañez Sanabria – ‘Privateers, Pirates, and Local Alliances in the Opening of the South Sea (1570-1700)’
  4. David Wilson – ‘A War Against Piracy? Local Agency and the Limits of Imperial Authority in Oceanic Spaces throughout the British Atlantic, 1716-1726’

12:40 – 13:30 lunch

13:30 – 15:20 panel 6 [Material Culture and Epistemology]

  1. Elsje van Kessel – ‘Power and Privateering: On the Illicit Movement of Asian Material Culture to Europe, circa 1600’
  2. Djoeke van Netten – ‘Borderlines: Straddling Land and Sea in Early Modern Atlases’
  3. Subah Dayal – ‘Elegies to the Port: Surat and Vengurla in the Persianate Imaginary’ (Skype)

15:20 – 15:40 coffee/tea break

15:40 – 17:00 panel 7 [Maritime Actors and Environments]

  1. John McAleer – ‘Crossing the Line? Ceremonies, Rituals, and Rites of Passage on Atlantic Voyages in the Age of Sail’
  2. Nathalia Brichet – ‘In the Wake – Liveability and Colonial Ecologies around the Harbour of St Thomas’
  3. Simon Mølholm Olesen – ‘They tricked the Dutch: Inuit Management of the Colonial Encounter in West Greenland, ca. 1720-50’
  4. Eva Johanna Holmberg – ‘Youth at Sea: a Mobile and Fragile Seafaring Youth in Richard Norwood’s Journal (1639-40)’

17:00 closing drinks


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CFP: Hakluyt Society Symposium 2019: Rethinking Power in Maritime Encounters

Call for Papers

The Hakluyt Society Symposium 2019

Rethinking Power in Maritime Encounters (1400-1900)

5-6 September 2019

Leiden University, the Netherlands

Organised in collaboration with the Linschoten-Vereeniging, Itinerario, and Leiden University’s Institute for History

Deadline: 1 March 2019

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Keynote: Joshua Reid (UW Seattle).

Speakers confirmed: Pepijn Brandon (VU), Nathalia Brichet (Aarhus), Kevin Dawson (UC Merced), Mariana de Campos Françozo (Leiden), John McAleer (Southampton), Elsje van Kessel (St. Andrews), Sujit Sivasundaram (Cambridge).


Maritime histories have always told stories about power. Whether in the form of narratives about mastery of the seas, conquest of lands, or enslavement of peoples, traditional accounts of enterprising explorers and hardy mariners have located power and agency with a limited groups of actors: almost always male, and predominantly European. In doing so, histories of maritime encounters have mostly reproduced the perspectives contained in their sources, foregrounding the actions of European men and casting other actors as largely passive, peripheral, or powerless. These histories are in need of revision.

This conference seeks to explore new narratives of maritime power, to investigate the ways in which power was constituted and contested, how it was gendered and racialised, and through what strategies it was subverted or resisted. It aims to bring together historians working on (the limits of) state and non-state power, multiple actors and traditions of seafaring and exploration, and the agency of women, enslaved people, and other historically marginalised groups. Moreover, by expanding the focus to include environmental histories, this conference seeks to reconsider interrelations between humans and their marine surroundings.

This two-day conference will host senior experts and early career researchers in a cross-disciplinary conversation aimed at critically rethinking the role of power in maritime history. Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to:

  • Asymmetrical power relations
  • Global actors and agency
  • Writing and discursive power
  • Gender and sexuality
  • Maritime power and the environment
  • Materiality and maritime encounters
  • Maritime encounters and spatiality
  • Resistance, mutinies, rebellions
  • Slavery and maritime labour

Held in the historic city of Leiden, Rethinking Power in Maritime Encounters is organised by the Hakluyt Society in collaboration with the Linschoten-Vereeniging. Prospective speakers are invited to submit proposals of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers along with a brief bio statement to hakluytleiden2019@gmail.com by 1 March 2019. Contributions from postgraduate researchers are particularly encouraged.

The Hakluyt Society will make available five travel bursaries (up to £200 each) to postgraduate and early career applicants with limited access to funding – if you would like to apply for a bursary, please indicate this when sending your abstract and explain your reasons for applying. Reduced registration fees apply for members of the Hakluyt Society and Linschoten-Vereeniging.

Organising committee: Michiel van Groesen, Carolien Stolte, Suze Zijlstra (Universiteit Leiden), and Guido van Meersbergen (University of Warwick)

Download CFP and poster.


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@HakluytSociety – Become a member at www.hakluyt.com – #HakluytLeiden

 

Hakluyt Society Research Funding 2019

For the fourth year running, the Hakluyt Society in pleased to announce its annual round of Research Funding. In furtherance of the principal objects of the Hakluyt Society, to promote the study of historical exploration, travel, and worldwide cultural encounter, the Society operates two schemes of research funding. These are:

  • The Hakluyt Society Research Grant, up to six of which will be available per calendar year, with a maximum allocation of £1500 each.
  • The Hakluyt Society Short-Term Fellowship, two of which will be available per calendar year. The Fellowship may be held for a maximum of four months, with a maximum allowance of £1650 per month. 

These funding opportunities are open to anyone whose research interests meet with and promote the objects of the Hakluyt Society. All applicants must be members of the Hakluyt Society, and applications must be received by 31 January 2019.

Please ensure that you have read the guidelines below before completing the Application Form.


 

– Join the Hakluyt Society on www.hakluyt.com


Guidelines

1. Hakluyt Society funding is given to support and extend the stated aims of the Society. The primary aim of the Society is ‘to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material’. In addition, the Society also undertakes and supports activities supplementary to its primary role as a publisher of scholarly texts: ‘by organizing and participating in meetings, symposia and conferences which contribute to an increased awareness of geographical exploration and cultural encounter’. Applicants should state clearly in their application how the proposed project meets the aims of the Society

2. The applicant must be a member of the Hakluyt Society at the time of application. (For further information about membership and the activities of the Hakluyt Society, please visit www.hakluyt.com).

3. In completing the form, applicants should make clear which one of the two funding sources is being applied for. It is not possible to apply for both of the funding sources in the same year. In the event of successful application, further financial support from the Society will not normally be considered within two years.

4. The Abstract should be written in language suitable for a non-academic audience and outline the importance and timeliness of the work proposed and its fit to the work of the Society. The section Description of the Research, should place the nature of the research proposed in relation to the relevant scholarly literature and identify the originality and significance of the work proposed.

5. Where relevant, the library/archive or other repository to be visited should be identified, as should the expected time frame in which the research will be undertaken. The application should detail the number of working days that will be spent at the library/archive/repository in question.

6. The Budget must give projected costs in as much detail as possible, and should justify the levels of expenditure proposed.

7. Plans for communication of the research should be fully explained. These should also be realistic and precisely stated.

8. Applicants should note that the funding is intended to cover the costs associated with the conduct of research (including reasonable travel and subsistence expenses), and is not for an applicant’s ongoing maintenance expenses during the period of research. Maintenance can be paid, however, for periods when the research requires the applicant to live away from home. Please note that Hakluyt Society research funding is for research with identifiable publication plans only and may not be used simply for dissertation research or write-up. Funding will not be given for computer hardware or software costs. If applicants are in any doubt over allowable costs, they are advised to contact the Society.

9. Successful applicants are required to acknowledge the support of the Hakluyt Society in any resultant Hakluyt Society publication, other research publication or in events of outreach and dissemination.

10. The maximum sum available for a Hakluyt Society Research Grant (HSRG) is £1500. Normally, there will be up to six Hakluyt Society Research Grants available in any one research funding year (April to March). Normally, there will be two Hakluyt Society Short-Term Fellowships available in any funding year. The Hakluyt Society Short-Term Fellowship (HSSTF) may be held for a maximum of four calendar months. The maximum sum available for the Hakluyt Society Short-Term Fellowship will be £1650 per calendar month (i.e., the maximum sum that may be sought is £6600). Normally, there will be two Hakluyt Society Short-Term Fellowship available in any one funding year.

Normally, in the event of successful application, the sum awarded will be paid directly to the named applicant. It is the applicant’s responsibility to provide the Society with full details of the bank account into which the award should be paid. Upon completion of the project for which an award has been made, the applicant is expected to provide the Society with a summary of the expenditure, with itemized receipts for the same, a brief report of the work undertaken and a blog post on the work or some aspect of it, suitable for publication on the Hakluyt Society Blog. The Society (at office@hakluyt.com) would like to receive the summary of expenditure, report and blog post as soon as possible after the research is completed, but requires them no later than one month after the research funding year, i.e. by 30 April 2019.

11. Successful candidates will receive notification of the outcome of their application. Due to the volume of applications, please note that the Society is unable to enter into correspondence on individual unsuccessful applications. The Society reserves the right to invite selected unsuccessful candidates to develop their proposals further to reapply in subsequent rounds, and may provide additional feedback in such cases.


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The voyage of Captain John Narbrough to the Strait of Magellan and the South Sea in his Majesty’s Ship Sweepstakes 1669-1671

The Hakluyt Society is pleased to present its newest publication: The Voyage of Captain John Narbrough to the Strait of Magellan and the South Sea in his Majesty’s Ship Sweepstakes, 1669-1671, edited by Richard J. Campbell, Peter T. Bradley, and Joyce Lorimer. Purchased in 2009 by the British Library, John Narbrough’s fair copy of the journal of his voyage through the Strait of Magellan and north to Valdivia in the Sweepstakes (1669-1671) is now published for the first time, together with an incomplete and somewhat different copy of the journal, held in the Bodleian Library. The Hakluyt Society publication furthermore contains previously unpublished records made by members of Narbrough’s company, as well as reproductions of the charts on which he relied and those he produced. In this blog post, Captain Richard Campbell explains the circumstances of Narbrough’s voyage and the scholarly significance of the new edition.


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In May 1669 Captain John Narbrough was appointed to command HMS Sweepstakes for a voyage to the West Indies, Shortly thereafter an adventurer who has gone down in history as Don Carlos (he gave different versions of his name, nationality and accounts of his life to virtually everyone with whom he came in contact) submitted a proposal to King Charles II for a voyage to South America with an apparent view to establishing trading relation with the native inhabitants and stirring up a rebellion against the Spanish authorities. The King, having had this proposal investigated, agreed to sending a frigate with a pink in company on a voyage of discovery with a view to investigating the prospects of trade.

Cover Narbrough

Narbrough, whose ship was by this time anchored in the Downs, was recalled to London where he was personally instructed by the King and the Lord High Admiral, James, Duke of York to embark Don Carlos and sail for South America, south of the Río de la Plata and discover the coast round through the Strait of Magellan as far north as Valdivia, making contact with the native inhabitants and ascertaining what the prospects were for trade, with the evident unwritten aim of trying to encroach on the Spanish access to the gold in the area. It is quite clear in Narbrough’s instructions that the King did not trust Don Carlos, but Narbrough was ordered to take his advice if he found him to have any knowledge of the area they were to visit.

An account of this voyage was published in 1669 with a second edition in 1711. This is an abbreviated version of a manuscript in the Bodleian Museum, augmented by the journal kept by Lieutenant Peckett, one of Narbrough’s officers.

The voyage resulted in a series of charts of the harbours visited and of the Strait of Magellan, which became the basic standard of all subsequent charts of the Strait for the next hundred years, together with the knowledge that trade in that area would be impracticable. While in Valdivia, a Lieutenant and three members of Narbrough’s company were detained by the Spanish Governor who refused all requests for their release. Narbrough, whose company by this time was reduced to about 70 people, with a garrison of over 600 Spaniards ashore, and having been expressly forbidden by the King from taking any military action against the Spanish, was forced to leave them there (together with Don Carlos who had been secretly landed at his own request and subsequently surrendered to the Spanish).

On his return to England, Narbrough was well received by the King and immediately re-employed. He went on to have a very distinguished career, being knighted and serving as Commander in Chief in the Mediterranean and a Commissioner of the Navy.

Narbrough map
‘A Draught of Porte San Julyan’ (British Library, BL, Add MSS 88980C)

In the nineteenth century, largely as a result of Admiral Burney’s very unfavourable account of the voyage, it came to be considered a complete disaster – he wrote “It might ironically have been said, that the business of Narbrough’s voyage was to set four men ashore at Baldivia. The persons landed were left to their fate without interference being made on their behalf by the British Government.”[1] This view of the voyage has largely persisted until the present day.

In 2009, the British Library launched a successful appeal to purchase Narbrough’s own manuscript of this voyage, which in the current Hakluyt Society edition is now published in full for the first time, together with the complete Bodleian manuscript; the journal of Lieutenant Peckett; the “short accompt” of Richard Williams, and the journal of William Chambers, who was mate of the pink which accompanied the Sweepstakes for the first part of the voyage. There are also extracts from John Woods’ account and sailing directions, which were abbreviated, combined and published by William Hack in 1699 (of which there are modern reproductions available).  It has also been possible to locate Don Carlos’ original proposals in The National Archives and make use of various other Spanish archives to fill out the picture of his activities.

The new Hakluyt Society edition presents a much fuller account of the voyage than that published in 1694, together with detail of its advent, and seeks to demonstrate that Narbrough carried out his instructions to the letter, and that despite the loss of his men in Valdivia the voyage fulfilled the Kings orders. It also aims to reinstate Narbrough as the exceedingly competent and courageous naval officer he undoubtedly was, and give the voyage its proper place in the hydrographic history of the Strait of Magellan.


Captain Richard J. Campbell, OBE., Royal Navy, joined BRNC Dartmouth as a Cadet in 1946. After service in submarines he specialised in Hydrograhic Surveying. He worked in various regions round the world including Antarctica and the Falkland Islands when he visited the Strait of Magellan. His last command was HMS Hydra serving as a Hospital Ship in the Falkland War in 1982, after which he served in the UK Hydrographic Office until his retirement in 1994. His previous publications for the Hakluyt Society include: The Discovery of the South Shetland Islands / The Voyage of the Brig Williams, 1819-1820 and The Journal of Midshipman C.W. Poynter (3rd series, no. 4); and ‘The Journal of HMS Beagle in the Strait of Magellan, by Pringle Stokes, Commander RN 1827′, in: Four Travel Journals / The Americas, Antarctica and Africa / 1775-1874 (3rd series, no. 18).

[1] Burney, James, A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean (5 vols, London 1803-17), Vol III, p. 375.


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