Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RUTTER (Making the Earth Global: Early Modern Nautical Rutters and the Construction of a Global Concept of the Earth)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-09-01 al 2024-02-29
The RUTTER Project explores the idea that a global picture of the Earth emerged in the 16th century as the result of regular long distance sea travels. By 'global picture' is meant here the conception of the Earth as a single coherent object, epistemically congruent, accessible to scientific enquiry. Whereas in prior centuries the study of the earth had been dominated by local approaches, in the 16th century deep transformations were set in motion in consequence of the establishment of regular and stable long distance maritime routes. As more and more Europeans were involved in these voyages -- either by participating directly or by having direct contact with people that had done so -- the knowledge, the perceptions and the convictions that were formed about the Earth gradually acquired a greater cultural weight. Project RUTTER is not concerned with the whole complexity of events related with the onset of these large-scale maritime voyages (economic, geo-political, military, etc). Rather, it is focused on how a scientific description of a global Earth was created. Thus, it is clearly an interdisciplinary Project that while centered in the History of Science, intersects Maritime History, Global History, History of Knowledge, History of Education, etc.
The RUTTER Project is showing that a critical notion such as that of a global Earth was achieved not as the result of strictly intellectual developments, but due to the changes in actual living conditions. Changing one's existential conditions means establishing a meaningful connection between the local context and the global context, that is, making global conditions impinge on individual circumstances. When this commensuration does not exist, no globality can be said to occur. The mere intellectual understanding that the Earth is a globe is not enough for a lived perception of a global Earth. Thus, RUTTER tries to overcome the idea that a global Earth is the result of adopting a specific point of view or a mental picture, and focuses on the variety of concurrent historical processes that created and substantiated such a concept.
The argument that underlies RUTTER is based and supported by a corpus of materials hitherto poorly explored: early modern nautical rutters (sailing directions), ship's logbooks, maritime manuals, etc. These are technical documents that collect and analyse critical information for the successful accomplishment of oceanic navigation. This includes elements of strict nautical nature (courses, distances, and latitudes), as well as information on oceanography (currents and tides), meteorology (winds and storms), geography, geophysics (magnetic declination) and the natural world. The relevance of these documents is that they are the earliest Western documents that testify to the stable and regular lived experience of traversing the earth’s oceans on a global, planetary scale. Their unique value lies not only in the fact that they are exceptional historical repositories of information about the world on a planetary scale but, more importantly, that they document the emergence of global concepts about the earth. In fact, no earlier documents contain information about the earth on a comparable worldwide scale.
In addition to the documents themselves, research is also focused on the modes of circulation of information, its channels and networks of transmission, its institutional support. Phenomena of transmission of information across diverse maritime cultures are also especially relevant.
In sum, the main objective of RUTTER is to write a narrative of the scaling up of a scientific description of the earth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the lived experience of travelling and observing the earth in long-distance sea voyages. It is our belief that the clarification of the historical trajectories that led to the construction of a global earth will bring relevant lessons to some of the challenges of our present time.
The RUTTER Project is showing that a critical notion such as that of a global Earth was achieved not as the result of strictly intellectual developments, but due to the changes in actual living conditions. Changing one's existential conditions means establishing a meaningful connection between the local context and the global context, that is, making global conditions impinge on individual circumstances. When this commensuration does not exist, no globality can be said to occur. The mere intellectual understanding that the Earth is a globe is not enough for a lived perception of a global Earth. Thus, RUTTER tries to overcome the idea that a global Earth is the result of adopting a specific point of view or a mental picture, and focuses on the variety of concurrent historical processes that created and substantiated such a concept.
The argument that underlies RUTTER is based and supported by a corpus of materials hitherto poorly explored: early modern nautical rutters (sailing directions), ship's logbooks, maritime manuals, etc. These are technical documents that collect and analyse critical information for the successful accomplishment of oceanic navigation. This includes elements of strict nautical nature (courses, distances, and latitudes), as well as information on oceanography (currents and tides), meteorology (winds and storms), geography, geophysics (magnetic declination) and the natural world. The relevance of these documents is that they are the earliest Western documents that testify to the stable and regular lived experience of traversing the earth’s oceans on a global, planetary scale. Their unique value lies not only in the fact that they are exceptional historical repositories of information about the world on a planetary scale but, more importantly, that they document the emergence of global concepts about the earth. In fact, no earlier documents contain information about the earth on a comparable worldwide scale.
In addition to the documents themselves, research is also focused on the modes of circulation of information, its channels and networks of transmission, its institutional support. Phenomena of transmission of information across diverse maritime cultures are also especially relevant.
In sum, the main objective of RUTTER is to write a narrative of the scaling up of a scientific description of the earth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the lived experience of travelling and observing the earth in long-distance sea voyages. It is our belief that the clarification of the historical trajectories that led to the construction of a global earth will bring relevant lessons to some of the challenges of our present time.
Researchers of the RUTTER team have been very active ever since the beginning of the Project (Sept 2019). Despite the obstacles and limitations imposed by the Corona pandemic, which forced some adjustments, the pace of work and research has been intense and very productive. Following the objectives of the Project, an important part of the work during the Project's first phase was related to archival research. This was hampered by the Corona virus pandemic, but even so a considerable number of missions to archives in Portugal and Spain was carried out, and systematic searches of other archives, via online databases, were also performed. This work has been very successful and can be considered nearly complete.
Four books were published, mostly related to an in-depth analysis of the celebrated Magellan-Elcano first circumnavigation voyage (1519-22), the archetypical long-distance sea voyage of the early 16th century. Of these books, a mention should perhaps be made to the contextualized collection of rutters and nautical instructions on how to cross the Strait of Magellan, in the period 1520-1620 (Atravessando a Porta do Pacífico, 2020), by H. Leitão and J. M. Moreno Madrid, and the annotated translation of Antonio Pigafetta's famous Relazione, by J. Lima. More books are being written at the moment, including both monographs and edited volumes.
Papers were also written and submitted to academic journals. Given the time it takes for academic journals to process the received manuscripts (considerably more than one year) only seven have already been published (https://rutter-project.org/publications-papers/). Several other research papers are in process of publication.
Five online thematic international workshops were organized. The topics addressed in these workshops cover the main lines of research of the Project: Rethinking a case of global knowledge circulation: Jan Huygen van Linschoten and the «Itinerario», 6 December 2021; Sailing the Early Modern Ocean: Texts and Practices in Contact, 24-25 January 2022; Writings from the Sea – Rutters, Sailing Directions and Pilot Books as a Specific Genre of Technical Literature, 11 February 2022; Cosmology, Astrology and Globalization in Early Modern Navigation, 17 February 2022; A Global Earth in the Classroom--New Voices in the History of Early Modern Education, 24 February 2022. These workshops brought together the most renowned experts in the topics addressed and were attended by a considerable number of interested colleagues from diverse countries.
A series of seminars with invited speakers was held (https://rutter-project.org/rutter-seminars/) whenever possible with in-person presentations. The RUTTER team members actively presented the results of their work in a considerable number of conferences and academic meetings.
Seventeen online sessions "Scholar Meets RUTTER" (https://rutter-project.org/scholar-meets-rutter/) were held. In these sessions well known scholars were invited to discuss their work with the RUTTER team, while at the same time becoming familiar with RUTTER research.
Four PhD dissertations are under way. Internal sessions of training in paleography and Latin were held, especially directed to the younger researchers and PhD students.
The RUTTER team has been very conscious of the need to make available all the information it gathers, following open science principles. A series of Technical Notes was started (https://rutter-project.org/technical-notes/) a Virtual Library was constructed (https://www.aseaofbooks.org/) and the Project makes available other materials such as Book Reviews (https://rutter-project.org/book-reviews/) and a Blog (https://rutter-blog.blogspot.com/).
A blog specifically devoted to the study of Arabic sources has been created (https://lisbon-arabic-reading.blogspot.com/) and online reading sessions are held periodically.
The RUTTER Project created an internship program so that young students could experience joining an ERC research team during a period of some months. Up to now, 13 students were interns of the Project.
Ever since the start of the Project the RUTTER team has used Social Media. Both Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ErcRutter) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/ercrutter) have been used intensively to share information, and to publicize the activities of RUTTER.
The members of the RUTTER team have participated in outreach activities and the PI has received invitations to present the results of the Project's research both to university colleagues and to the general public.
Four books were published, mostly related to an in-depth analysis of the celebrated Magellan-Elcano first circumnavigation voyage (1519-22), the archetypical long-distance sea voyage of the early 16th century. Of these books, a mention should perhaps be made to the contextualized collection of rutters and nautical instructions on how to cross the Strait of Magellan, in the period 1520-1620 (Atravessando a Porta do Pacífico, 2020), by H. Leitão and J. M. Moreno Madrid, and the annotated translation of Antonio Pigafetta's famous Relazione, by J. Lima. More books are being written at the moment, including both monographs and edited volumes.
Papers were also written and submitted to academic journals. Given the time it takes for academic journals to process the received manuscripts (considerably more than one year) only seven have already been published (https://rutter-project.org/publications-papers/). Several other research papers are in process of publication.
Five online thematic international workshops were organized. The topics addressed in these workshops cover the main lines of research of the Project: Rethinking a case of global knowledge circulation: Jan Huygen van Linschoten and the «Itinerario», 6 December 2021; Sailing the Early Modern Ocean: Texts and Practices in Contact, 24-25 January 2022; Writings from the Sea – Rutters, Sailing Directions and Pilot Books as a Specific Genre of Technical Literature, 11 February 2022; Cosmology, Astrology and Globalization in Early Modern Navigation, 17 February 2022; A Global Earth in the Classroom--New Voices in the History of Early Modern Education, 24 February 2022. These workshops brought together the most renowned experts in the topics addressed and were attended by a considerable number of interested colleagues from diverse countries.
A series of seminars with invited speakers was held (https://rutter-project.org/rutter-seminars/) whenever possible with in-person presentations. The RUTTER team members actively presented the results of their work in a considerable number of conferences and academic meetings.
Seventeen online sessions "Scholar Meets RUTTER" (https://rutter-project.org/scholar-meets-rutter/) were held. In these sessions well known scholars were invited to discuss their work with the RUTTER team, while at the same time becoming familiar with RUTTER research.
Four PhD dissertations are under way. Internal sessions of training in paleography and Latin were held, especially directed to the younger researchers and PhD students.
The RUTTER team has been very conscious of the need to make available all the information it gathers, following open science principles. A series of Technical Notes was started (https://rutter-project.org/technical-notes/) a Virtual Library was constructed (https://www.aseaofbooks.org/) and the Project makes available other materials such as Book Reviews (https://rutter-project.org/book-reviews/) and a Blog (https://rutter-blog.blogspot.com/).
A blog specifically devoted to the study of Arabic sources has been created (https://lisbon-arabic-reading.blogspot.com/) and online reading sessions are held periodically.
The RUTTER Project created an internship program so that young students could experience joining an ERC research team during a period of some months. Up to now, 13 students were interns of the Project.
Ever since the start of the Project the RUTTER team has used Social Media. Both Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ErcRutter) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/ercrutter) have been used intensively to share information, and to publicize the activities of RUTTER.
The members of the RUTTER team have participated in outreach activities and the PI has received invitations to present the results of the Project's research both to university colleagues and to the general public.
The research already realized by the RUTTER team has opened new areas of research or deepened the knowledge in already established ones. First, in strictly documentary terms, the team has identified and catalogued a great mass of documents (rutters, ship's logbooks, nautical manuals, etc). Although many of these documents were known, they were poorly catalogued and in most cases and had never been analysed. But most of all, new documentation was located and studied. This information is now being made available to the wider community of scholars either via inventories, online publication and research papers. Work at incorporating this new information in a database is under way. This will provide an absolute quantum leap in the accessibility of these documents to the wider academic community.
The team is also working on Digital Humanities techniques for the presentation of these materials. Up to now, work has been made around a prototype project, the Esmeraldo de situ orbis, a Portuguese manuscript of ca. 1505 for which a new transcription was made, a hyperlink tagging was created, georeferencing was set up and a dedicated website is being developed. The first volumes of a RUTTER Digital Library have started to appear, consisting of fully-digital editions in TEI-compliant XML and PDF formats. The text elements are being progressively tagged according to international standards, and are thus searchable and actionable in numerous ways conducive to new research developments.
The archival work, although of critical importance to the Project is not by any means the most important contribution of the Project. The RUTTER team has been studying nautical technical literature as new genre of technical literature, created under the tension of competing influences of academic knowledge and artisanal practices.
Significant progress has been achieved in the understanding of mechanisms for the circulation of nautical and cosmographical information in the early modern period. Whereas traditionally historians had focused on the circulation of books and their impact in learned circles, the RUTTER team has been showing that circulation of this information was happening via other many other channels, such as diplomatic ones and espionage, artisanal contacts and the exchange of professionals (pilots), etc. A considerable amount of translation and adaption from one maritime context to another was also a key element, and this has been examined attentively.
RUTTER has also clearly progressed beyond the historiographical state of the art in two directions, which are still in progress: RUTTER researchers are producing new editions and translations of Arabic maritime documents (mostly the works by Ibn Majid and al-Mahri) and they have also opened a new line of research by examining how the teaching of cosmography and geography shaped pre-university education in Europe.
The team is also working on Digital Humanities techniques for the presentation of these materials. Up to now, work has been made around a prototype project, the Esmeraldo de situ orbis, a Portuguese manuscript of ca. 1505 for which a new transcription was made, a hyperlink tagging was created, georeferencing was set up and a dedicated website is being developed. The first volumes of a RUTTER Digital Library have started to appear, consisting of fully-digital editions in TEI-compliant XML and PDF formats. The text elements are being progressively tagged according to international standards, and are thus searchable and actionable in numerous ways conducive to new research developments.
The archival work, although of critical importance to the Project is not by any means the most important contribution of the Project. The RUTTER team has been studying nautical technical literature as new genre of technical literature, created under the tension of competing influences of academic knowledge and artisanal practices.
Significant progress has been achieved in the understanding of mechanisms for the circulation of nautical and cosmographical information in the early modern period. Whereas traditionally historians had focused on the circulation of books and their impact in learned circles, the RUTTER team has been showing that circulation of this information was happening via other many other channels, such as diplomatic ones and espionage, artisanal contacts and the exchange of professionals (pilots), etc. A considerable amount of translation and adaption from one maritime context to another was also a key element, and this has been examined attentively.
RUTTER has also clearly progressed beyond the historiographical state of the art in two directions, which are still in progress: RUTTER researchers are producing new editions and translations of Arabic maritime documents (mostly the works by Ibn Majid and al-Mahri) and they have also opened a new line of research by examining how the teaching of cosmography and geography shaped pre-university education in Europe.