These essays deal with questions of navigation and, more broadly, the intellectual challenges posed by Spain's acquisition of an empire across the Atlantic. Crudely, they had to find out what was where and how to get there. The first section of the volume looks at the 16th-century Sevillan cosmographers and pilots charged with this task: their achievements, the social and political context in which they worked, and the methods used to establish scientific truths - including the resort to litigation. Ursula Lamb then turns to examine specific problems, from the routing of transatlantic shipping to the application of cartographic coordinates to allocate unexplored territories. The final articles move forward to the time when, after a lapse of two centuries, Spanish nautical science became revitalised, and the Spanish Hydrographic Office was established.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'This...is a book that a wide variety of historians- political, diplomatic, and social, as well as historians of science, cartography, and exploration- should find invaluable.' JEMH '...this fascinating overview of the equipment, personalities and politics from which evolved the enhanced maritime capabilities required for effective control of Spain's vastly expanded empire.' Terrae Incognitae: The Journal for the History of Discoveries, Vol. XXIX
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Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
ISBN-13
978-1-040-23430-3 (9781040234303)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Contents: Introduction; The cosmographies of Pedro de Medina; The Quatri Partitu en Cosmographia by Alonso de Chaves: an interpretation; Science by litigation: a cosmographic feud; La nueva ciencia geogrA!fica; The Spanish cosmographic juntas of the 16th century; Cosmographers of Seville: nautical science and social experience; The Sevillian lodestone: science and circumstance;The teaching of pilots and the ChronographA-a o Repertorio de los Tiempos; Nautical scientists and their clients in Iberia (1508-1624): science from imperial perspective; Dos huellas cientA-ficas del tratado de Tordesillas; Puerto de Caballos, Honduras: an abandoned choice; The silver masters: a link in the Spanish silver chain; Advice to the King: the route to the Indies and the South Atlantic; Argos and Polyphemus: eyes on the New World; MartA-n FernA!ndez de Navarrete clears the deck: the Spanish Hydrographic Office (1809-1824); The London years of Felipe BauzA!: Spanish hydrographer in exile, 1823-34; Early Spanish plans for lithographic reproduction of maps: a fruitful failure; Index.
