Hakluyt Society-sponsored conferences, lectures and workshops
The Hakluyt Society supports research in its fields of interest by sponsoring and organising conferences and symposia, lectures and workshops related to voyages of discovery, history of exploration, maritime history, and historical travel accounts.
Hakluyt Society Editorial Workshop: A Report by Captain Mike Barritt
Present-Day Toponymy To start, editors should refer to official publications produced by the relevant national authority or a dependable derived publication. In the maritime sphere charts and sailing directions are produced in hard and soft copy by many Hydrographic Offices. Details can be found online using a standard search engine. The Office of Coast Survey makes all charts of domestic US waters available for download online. This is exceptional. A useful online source, analogous to Google Maps and Earth, is the website of Navionics, where the Chart Viewer allows access to digital charting of most areas. The toponymy on this site will reflect usage of the contiguous state. The best source [...]
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Hakluyt Society Editorial Workshop, London, Friday 4 May 2018
The first one-day Hakluyt Society Editorial Workshop will take place on Friday 4 May at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. There will be a range of contributions from scholars who are or have been involved with Hakluyt Society published volumes, including substantial talks from Professor Michael Brennan, Dr Angela Byrne and Professor Joyce Lorimer. The aims of the workshop are to encourage interest in the academic editing of texts for publication and to offer practical support and advice to those engaged on editing projects. While the emphasis will be on the Society’s approach to text editing, the workshop will be of value to anyone involved with or [...]
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Looking back on the symposium “Trading Companies and Travel Literature”
One month after the Hakluyt Society Symposium in Chatham, I look back on the event with great pleasure and satisfaction. Run by Edmond Smith (PEIC), Aske Brock (PEIC), and myself, and financed by a generous award from the Hakluyt Society’s Harry & Grace Smith Fund, the symposium was a resounding success. This was due not only to the stunning environment of the Historic Dockyard in Chatham - and particularly the magnificent Royal Dockyard Church - which provided #Hakluyt17 with the best possible historical and maritime framing; but above all to the consistently high academic quality of papers presented and collegial and constructive discussion held over the course of two stimulating days. As always in these matters, the people [...]
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Programme: Hakluyt Society Symposium 2017 – Trading Companies and Travel Literature
11 September 2017 09.30 – 09.40: Welcome and Introduction 09.40 – 11.10: Session 1 - Production of Travel Literature Dr Eva Johanna Holmberg (Queen Mary, London), ‘Passages Recollected by Memory’: Remembering the Levant Company in Seventeenth-Century Merchant Life Writing Byapti Sur (Leiden University), Pandemonium in Pomp: A Dutch account of Festivals and Festivities in Seventeenth-Century Mughal India Dr Liam Haydon (University of Kent), Merchants Making History 11.10 – 11.30: Coffee break 11.30 – 13.00: Session 2 - Uses of Travel Literature Prof Michiel van Groesen (Leiden University), From Secrecy to Openness: Dierick Ruiters’ Manuscript Maps and the Birth of the Dutch Atlantic World Dr Adrien Delmas (l'Institut français d'Afrique du Sud, Paris), The Forgotten Function of Writing: Travel [...]
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‘World enough, and time’: Richard Hakluyt and the Renaissance Discovery of the World
England’s pioneering promoter of overseas exploration, commerce and expansion, Richard Hakluyt, assembled the largest selection of English travel accounts of the era, covering every area of activity around the globe. His book The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation is an astounding compilation of English voyages and discoveries up to his time and marks what we might call the beginnings of the great British historical adventure. It first appeared in one large c.600,000-word volume in 1589, and then in a much-expanded and updated edition in three volumes between 1598 and 1600. The second edition extended to more than 1.76 million words, containing over 600 individual accounts [...]
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Looking back on Hakluyt@400
The geographer and clergyman Richard Hakluyt died in good company: 1616 also marked the death of two internationally-renowned writers, William Shakespeare and the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Shakespeare's iambic pentameter and Cervantes's re-working of chivalric romance have continued to grace school curricula and playhouses around the globe; by comparison, Hakluyt's impact is less immediately apparent. The Hakluyt Society, in conjunction with the Bodleian Library, Museum for the History of Science and Museum for the History of Science in Oxford, held a two-day conference in November 2016 to examine Hakluyt's legacy at the four-hundredth anniversary of his death. His two editions of The Principal Navigations, Traffiques, and Voiages of the [...]
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‘Hakluyt and the Renaissance Discovery of the World’ – Conference Programme
Programme 24th November, the Bodleian Library 9.30AM–10.30AM arrival & coffee WESTON LIBRARY CONCOURSE SESSION 1: 10.30AM–12.15PM WESTON LIBRARY, LECTURE THEATRE Hakluyt, Oxford, & centres of power Chair: Dr Sarah Tyacke (Hakluyt Society) Prof. Sebastian Sobecki (University of Groningen): ‘Hakluyt and the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye’ Prof. David Harris Sacks (Reed College): ‘Learning to Know: The Educations of Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Harriot’. Anthony Payne (Hakluyt Society): ‘Hakluyt and Aristotle at Oxford’ 12.15PM-1.15PM lunch WESTON LIBRARY CONCOURSE SESSION 2: 1.15PM–3.00PM WESTON LIBRARY, LECTURE THEATRE Chair: Dr Will Poole (Oxford) ‘the three corners of the world’ (William Shakespeare, King John) Prof. Nandini Das (University of Liverpool): ‘Hakluyt and India’ Dr Felicity Stout [...]
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Hakluyt@400 Quatercentenary Programme Autumn 2016
Two free exhibitions will accompany this interdisciplinary conference, both to be launched in October 2016: Hakluyt and Geography in Oxford 1550–1650 at Christ Church, Oxford, and The World in a Book: Hakluyt and Renaissance Discovery, at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In addition, on Sunday 27 November there will be a commemorative service in All Saints Church, Wetheringsett, Suffolk. Read on for a detailed overview of events! Exhibitions The two free exhibitions in Oxford will run from October to December 2016. On Friday 14 October, Hakluyt and Geography in Oxford 1550–1650 will be launched at Christ Church, Hakluyt's old college, with a symposium on Renaissance scientific instruments and a reception. In November, events at Christ Church will [...]
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How to read Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations (1598-1600)?
MF: For me, one of the great challenges of working on Hakluyt’s collection has been finding productive ways to apply the tools of textual analysis – “literary criticism” – to a work that is not at all a “literary” text (or if it is, only in scattered moments), and which has both many discrete authors and one fairly taciturn editor. My Annual Lecture gave an overview of some lines of approach; I’ll describe a few of them here. Principal Navigations (1598-1600) [Hakluyt Society Extra Series, Nos. 1-12] is organized by geography: each of Hakluyt’s three volumes groups together voyages to particular parts of the globe. Mary Fuller (MIT), Experiments in Reading Hakluyt's Principal [...]
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Maritime Trade, Travel and Cultural Encounter in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
PROGRAMME The Hakluyt Society Conference, Hull, 13-14 November 2015 The Hakluyt Society Conference programme Friday 13 November 2015 9.15 Registration and Coffee 9.45 Welcome (President of the Hakluyt Society) 10.00-12.00 Panel 1: Travel Accounts and Logbooks Chair: Nigel Rigby Paul Sivitz (Idaho State University), ‘Ship Captains and Science: Linking Physical and Virtual Mobilities in the Eighteenth Century’ Natalie Cox (University of Warwick) and Steven Gray (University of Portsmouth), ‘Tales from the “Happy Ships” of Empire: The Westminster Press ‘Log Series’ and the emergence of Naval travel writing, 1883-1910’ Lena Moser (University of Tuebingen), ‘“Totally unfit for an English Naval Officer”: The travels and career of Friedrich Lappenberg of Bremen, Master [...]
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