Description
Book SynopsisHands-on science in the Age of Exploration. Winner of the John Lyman Book Award in Naval and Maritime Science and Technology by the North American Society for Oceanic History and the Leo Gershoy Prize by the American Historical AssociationThroughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the new mathematical techniques to sailors. As these experts debated the value of theory and practice, memory and mathematics, they created hybrid models that would have a lasting impact on applied science. In Sailing School, a richly illustrated comparative study of this transformative period, Margaret E. Schotte charts more than two hundred years of navigational history as she investigates how mariners solved the challenges of navigating beyond sight of land. She begins by outlining the influential sixteenth-century Iberian mode
Trade ReviewAs voyages stretched into open ocean, mathematical expertise in celestial navigation became essential. Hands-on instruction with instruments remained key, but as historian Margaret Schotte reveals in this deft, scholarly chronicle, the nautical manual soon came into its own.
—Barbara Kiser,
NatureSailing School deploys compelling printed images and manuscript notations to reconstruct the practice of learning, a particularly difficult feat for a phenomenon that takes place in an intangible mental realm. In fusing the history of learning and print with that of navigation, Schotte shows how deep transformations in public intellectual culture built on themselves.
—Sarah Kinkel,
Times Higher EducationSchotte, in combination with Johns Hopkins University Press, has produced a beautifully illustrated, perceptively argued, well-written monograph that enhances historical understandings of not just early modern navigation, but also of early modern technical education and the lived experience of the pre-industrial maritime world.
Sailing School exemplifies the kind of original work that close archival research can yield and will be a definitive work on its subject for years to come.
—Timothy S. Wolters,
Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies[A] valuable academic study.
Sailing School is well-written with copious documentation.
—James C. Hamilton,
Captain Cook SocietySailing School provides us with a technically researched history of navigational pedagogy with enough captivating prose to transport the reader into the decisions and methods of educators in classrooms from past centuries . . . Schotte has produced an exceptional history of education for a snapshot of time within a highly technical field.
—Darrell J. Glaser, United States Naval Academy,
EH.NetSailing School is and extremely informative look into the practice and transmission of navigational knowledge in Europe during the scientific revolution, and how text helped to codify and communicate that information to new practitioners.
—Kendra Lawrence, East Carolina University,
Nautical Research JournalSchotte's book is an important contribution to maritime history and absolutely should be on the shelf of all interested in the details of seafaring life in the age of sail, as well as those studying Europe's centuries of expansion and conquest. I strongly recommend this book accordingly.
—Ian Yeates,
The Northern MarinerIt is immediately clear that Schotte knows how to draw readers into sweeping historic events, enriching the story with detail and accuracy to inspire awe . . . From technical advancements to highly charged personal stories, Schotte's book is a fascinating read.
—Megan Mueller,
yFile - York University's NewsIt is the immediacy of its subject matter that makes
Sailing School so richly fascinating . . . Multinational in its approach, it offers insights into what was distinctive about pedagogy and practice in England, Spain, France and the Netherlands, and analysis of the extent to which knowledge and expertise were shared and transferred – not least through the medium of print. What one 17th-century teacher called 'This Art of Traversing and Caravanning over Neptune's Vast Dominions' has found in Schotte a gifted, lucid and illuminating chronicler.
—Mathew Lyons,
Literary ReviewThe history of getting from A to B is usually told as the history of instruments . . . But Margaret Schotte, in her excellent
Sailing School, argues convincingly that the history of how ships, people, and goods move across vast distances must also be, perhaps quite centrally, a history of the book.
Sailing School is a history of how early modern navigators learned to become navigators, and it holds important lessons for early modern knowledge as a whole.
—William Rankin, Yale University,
Isis: A Journal of the History of Science SocietySailing School, with its comparative analysis of academic traditions and training practices across Europe, is a magnificent contribution in the fields of History, History of Education, Pedagogy, Sociology, and Science in general. Margaret Schotte shows that "navigators were not born but made", enriching with new data and interpretations the history of knowledge in the Early Modern period. With a rigorous investigation and a brilliant narrative, she brings the European nautical science of the 16th and 17th centuries directly into the Scientific Revolution.
—Silvana Munzi,
RUTTER Book ReviewSchotte's book is a very important and highly relevant book for all interested in the technologies of the seas in the early modern period.
—Hakon With Andersen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
Technology and CultureTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Editorial Practices
Introduction
Prologue. A Model Education—Seville, ca. 1552
Chapter One. From the Water to the Writing Book—Amsterdam, ca.
Chapter Two. "By the Shortest Path": Developing Mathematical Rules—Dieppe, 1675
Chapter Three. Hands-On Theory along the Thames—London, 1683
Chapter Four. Paper Sailors, Classroom Lessons—The Netherlands, ca. 1710
Chapter Five. Lieutenant Riou Is Put to the Test—The Southern Indian Ocean, 1789
Epilogue. Sailing by the Book, ca. 1800
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
