History of exploration

The weaving of fiction through the framework of history can be a challenging occupation. My interest in writing maritime historical fiction or adventure stories inspired by the French voyages of discovery to the Indian and Pacific Oceans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has led me to seek models for this process of adaptation. Jules Verne was renowned for his intertexual use of nonfiction source material in his novels. As part of an exegetical process for writing my own novel I embarked upon a research project with my co-author to study the way in which Verne had incorporated passages from the voyages of the French Pacific explorer Dumont d’Urville (1826-29 and 1837-40) into Twenty Thousand leagues under the Sea (1867) Verne draws upon this factual account, not only for accurate content, but also for narrative structure and literary devices. More interesting though, is the way in which he adapts and re-arranges factual material to suit the demands of an adventure story, in particular simplifying characters and exaggerating events for dramatic effect. The influence of these changes on character and plot reveal much about the demands of adventure stories, as well as Verne’s own socio-political framework.

Places in space: initial challenges for exogeography as human activities develop outside planet Earth Over  fifty  years  after  the  first  Lunar  landing,  the  present-day  developments  in  as-tronautics are presenting humankind with the perspective of expanding its presence and  activity  beyond  the  boundaries  of  planet  Earth.  If  it  is  true  that  such  presence  and activity have been the traditional cores of attention for geography as a scientific discourse, it is reasonable to assume that they will remain so even outside of their orig-inary spatial boundaries. A possible evolution of geography might therefore be what has begun to be called exogeography i.e. the study of dynamics and processes which, after being developed on Earth during the past centuries, are likely to be developed in outer space or other celestial bodies in the future as well. This appears to be the case, since  human  territorialization  processes  appear  to  follow  the  same  general  patterns  even though their scope and areas of action evolve with time. A reflection on this topic is being started in Italy and some initial steps were taken in recent years. This paper briefly summarizes some perspectives in this field. By reviewing some epistemological statements about geography in classical academic formulations, this work asserts that there is a definite potential of continuity between geographical studies, regardless of their being focused on Earth as a physical context or on other planets or interplanetary space. This is due to the fact that their ultimate objects remain, consistently, human presence and activity in the spaces where they occur.

The find of 16 private letters of Captain-Commander Vitus Bering’s (1681-1741) and his family in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI) has enlarged our knowledge not only of the seafarer and explorer himself, his connections to family and friends but we also understand his character better his view on the Kamchatka Expedition and life in the Far East.
The letters were written in German by Vitus Bering, his wife Anna Christina and their nine year old son, Anton, in Okhotsk in February 1740. Assembled in an envelop, they were sent by courier to St Petersburg. The receivers were the two oldest sons of the couple, relatives (among them Anton Johann von Saltza, vice president of the College of the State Office) and friends (including the Austrian resident in Russia Nikolai Sebastian von Hohenholtz and the professor at the Gymnasium of Reval (Tallinn) Adolph Florian Sigismundi). However, these letters never reached their destination but disappeared in the archives together with papers of vice-chancellor, Count Osterman.
Not many private letters “normal”, not-princely individual from the second of the 18th century. Furthermore these letters cast light on a further little studied cultural layer: the close links to family and friend networksforeigners in Russian service upheld
The article tells about the conditions under which these letters were written; it analyses the ideological background for the negative attitude with which many historians have related to Vitus Bering; it argues that Bering was both an inventive and active leader of the Kamchatka Expedition and was dedicated to its completion. Therefore, the Insights into Bering’s private life, his character and mindset are important. Finally, the article provides biographic information of the persons mentioned in the letters,, published in Russian translation.

The letters are her published in Russian translation. They were published in German in Natasha Okhotina Lind & Peter Ulf Møller, Kommandøren og Konen. Arkivfund om danske deltagere i Vitus Berings Ekspeditioner (København 1997), pp. 59-108; and with English translation in Peter Ulf Møller & Natasha Okhotina Lind, Until Death Do Us Part. The letters and Travels of Anna and Vitus Bering (Fairbanks, Alaska, 2008), pp. 49-106.

In questo volume, sotto il titolo “Geostoria. Geostorie”, sono stati raccolti i contributi presentati qualche anno fa in due diversi incontri di studio organizzati dal Centro Italiano per gli Studi Storico-Geografici e dal Dipartimento di Studi Storici Geografici Antropologici dell’Università Roma Tre, a breve distanza di tempo l’uno dall’altro.
La scelta di unirli insieme, dettata essenzialmente da motivi pratici, si è rivelata utile anche da un punto di vista contenutistico, perché gli argomenti trattati nell’un caso e nell’altro si integrano e si completano utilmente a vicenda. Il primo convegno, infatti, dal titolo “Storie e geostorie. La storia delle esplorazioni come punto di incontro tra geografia, storia e altre storie. Esperienze di ricerca” (Roma, 15 e 16 marzo 2011) è in qualche modo la premessa del secondo: “Geostoria, Geostorie. Nel ventennale del Centro Italiano per gli Studi Storico-Geografici” (Roma, 4 e 5 dicembre 2012), che a sua volta ripropone, ampliandoli, alcuni temi del primo.
Così la raccolta finisce per raccontare una storia, quella di vent’anni di vita del Centro Italiano per gli Studi Storico-Geografici.

The travel accounts, drawings, and collections of Frédéric Cailliaud were an important early contribution to the birth of the new scientific discipline of Egyptology in the first half of the nineteenth century. But one of his major works-on the arts and crafts of ancient Egypt-was never published. For the first time here, his exquisite color plates are presented alongside a translation of his original French text describing them. Explanatory material by Andrew Bednarski and other scholars put the work in context. Arriving in Egypt in 1815, Cailliaud embarked upon a series of explorations that included the rediscovery of the Roman emerald mines at Mount Zabora and ancient routes to the Red Sea, and expeditions in the Eastern and Western Deserts, and the land we know today as Ethiopia. He made copious notes on the flora and fauna, people and antiquities he saw, and took a collection of over two thousand objects back to France. Cailliaud's beautifully rendered watercolors of scenes on ancient Egyptian tombs and temples (viewed before Champollion's deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs) show animated scenes of ancient daily life, with which he draws parallels to the nineteenth-century activities he observed around him. This is a work that will appeal not only to Egyptologists (professional and amateur), but also to historians, art historians, and readers interested in design. The original French text, never before published, is included in electronic form.

In 1991 on Bering Island archeologists excavated six graves. One, grave № 6, was identified as the grave of Captain-Commander Vitus Bering, who died December 8, 1741. The remaining five graves were considered to belong to crewmen of the Second Kamchatka expedition.
These identifications have never been verified nor
contested, nonetheless the reconstructed facial characteristics of the skull in grave № 6 has generally been acknowledged as representing those of Vitus Bering and are now widely known from numerous busts. In the article all known written sources, pertaining to the deaths and burials of crew members of the Expedition, are considered and analyzed, as are the anthropological data published by the archaeologists. As a result, it is demonstrated that neither the claim that one grave contained the bones of Vitus Bering nor the identifications of the remaining five stands up tocriticism.
Furthermore, the anthropological data entirely disproves the archaeologists' claim that this was the «necropolis of the Second Kamchatka expedition». Accordingly, the portrait created on the basis of the skull in grave № 6 cannot possibly be identified with Vitus Bering. Hence the burial place of the explorer is still unknown.

Captain Pierre-Paul Cupet’s 1891 expedition into the
Central Highlands of Vietnam combined scientific surveying and the collection of ethnographic information
with a diplomatic chess match against the Siamese over
rights to the unmapped territory. Cupet’s maps, and other French maps that followed, continued to refine the depiction of the physical and ethnic geography of the Central Highlands, as French administration was gradually consolidated.

The Perthes Institute of Gotha was the center of German cartography in the 19 and 20 centuries, sometimes described as the "Ministry of cartography" in Germany (N. Broc). It produced a great number of Atlases and maps as well as one of the leading geographical reviews of the time, the Petermanns Mitteilungen. This paper aims at making a precise description of this very special institution, of the market of cartography in Germany and Europe and of the way exploration of America was reflected in this journal between 1855 and 1914, following the high celebrated tradition of Humboldt.

Il XVI è stato il secolo in cui l’allargamento dell’orizzonte geografico precedentemente avviato dai popoli mediterranei ed europei, la ripresa dei viaggi, degli scambi e dei commerci, le grandi scoperte geografiche, misero in movimento nell’Europa di allora una serie di meccanismi profondi e portarono alla maturazione di molte istanze culturali, economiche e sociali. Il processo di costruzione della nuova immagine del mondo fu lento, ma inarrestabile. In questo intenso, faticoso e affascinante processo, in tale rivoluzione lenta ma inesorabile che coinvolse profondamente anche la religione, un ruolo di rilievo lo ebbero i Gesuiti che progettarono viaggi missionari affidando ai padri la redazione di opere destinate a colmare le lacune sulle Indie, producendo così nuova geografia e nuova cartografia. In questa occasione si intende incentrare l’attenzione sul Giappone, che per la Compagnia fu l’avamposto, “l’esperimento”, che permise poi di giungere in Cina.

Charles de Foucauld the scholar, the explorer, the frontier runner, has now become the symbol of the dialog between Christians and Moslems. Charles de Foucauld the ascete, the mystic beatified 89 years after his death. Charles de Foucauld and his mystery, that of a man haunted by melancholy, hatred of oneself, and aspiration to martyrdom… This book focuses on his extreme experience, his eremitic life in the middle of the Sahara, from 1905 to 1916. How did he live? Which were his relationships with his Tuareg neighbours? What place took his scholarly studies on the language of the Tuaregs in his life ?

А. фон Гумбольдт считал, что научное познание природы неотделимо от чувственного восприятия. Для целостного восприятия явлений природы наиболее подходят изображения, которые не только преодолевают ограниченность текстов и таблиц, но и взаимодополняют друг друга. В статье рассматриваются основные типы графики, использованной А. фон Гумбольдтом в его трудах, среди них выделяются: картины природы, тематические карты, инфографика и когнитивная графика. В контексте картин природы характеризуется картина-аллегория «HUMANITAS. LITERAE. FRUGES». В работе утверждается, что картина «Geographie des plantes equinoxiales…» относится к когнитивной графике, так как разработана для порождения у читателя «неожиданных аналогий», а следовательно – нового знания / A. von Humboldt glaubte, dass die wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis der Natur von der Sinneswahrnehmung untrennbar ist. Für die ganzheitliche Wahrnehmung der Naturphänomene sind die Bilder am besten geeignet, die nicht nur die Begrenztheit von Texten und Tabellen überwinden, sondern sich gegenseitig ergänzen. Der Artikel befasst sich mit den wichtigsten Arten von Grafiken, die von A. von Humboldt in seinen Schriften verwendet wurden, darunter fallen Naturbilder, thematische Karten, Infografiken und kognitive Grafiken. Im Kontext der Naturbilder zeichnet sich das Bild-Allegorie «HUMANITAS. LITERAE. FRUGES». Die Arbeit behauptet, dass das Bild «Geographie des plantes equinoxiales... " bezieht sich auf die kognitive Grafik, da es entwickelt wurde, um beim Leser «unerwartete Analogien» und damit neues wissen zu erzeugen / A. von Humboldt believed that the scientific cognition of nature is inseparable from the sensory perception. The images are optimal for a holistic perception of natural phenomena, because they overcome the limitations of texts and tables and complement each other. The article discusses the main types of graphics used by A. von Humboldt in his works: tableaus of nature, topic maps, infographics and cognitive graphics. The tableauallegory «Humanitas. Literae. Fruges.» is characterized in the context of the tableaus of nature. The paper argues that the tableau “Geographie des plantes equinoxiales ...” refers to cognitive graphics, as it is capable of suggesting “unexpected analogies” to the reader, which lead him to a new knowledges.

Resuming the generally ignored work I did some decades ago with Sidwell, this time Larisa Bondar' and I (writing in Russian, but there should be a revised English version soon) show once again (and with new evidence including a handwritten document by Messerschmidt found LB in the St. Pb archives) that almost everything generally taught both by historians of linguistics, historical linguists eager to find a precursor for either Ural-Altaic, Altaic, or Uralic in the 18th century, and above all the large industry of Strahlenberg "specialists" in Sweden and elsewhere and the smaller industry of experts on the Russian explorations of Siberia in the early modern era is incorrect.  The work published by Strahlenberg (not only the data as had been seen decades ago by others but above all the revolutionary classification of languages into families) was mostly the work of Messerschmidt--who we theorize (there is as yet no direct evidence) must have copied his best work in a hurry and sent it to Sweden for Strahlenberg to publish under his own name because otherwise he feared (correctly) that it would rot in the Russian Academy archives (where it was placed after being taken away from him).  Thus the charge of plagiarism raised by several authors against Strahlenberg seems to be entirely wrong.  The classification (or rather classifications because there are two incompatible ones in the book itself and we now know of others still in yet other Messerschmidt mss.) remain(s) of great theoretical importance, bearing as it does on the issue of which methods of language classification are valid for closely related as opposed to distantly related languages.  All or almost the classifications here, arrived by the same method that f.ex. Vovin uses brilliantly and surely at least almost always successfully to identify words from the language once identified as Ruan-ruan, now without a certain name, that are found embedded in Turkic was used by Messerschmidt in the 1720s to identify a number of valid (though some will dispute Finno-Ugric) language families, but the same method obviously cannot be used to identify much more difficult cases (which is why M. did not discover Uralic and contrary to the constant misinfomation did not propose Altaic much less Ural-Altaic),  Much remains unproven or even unknown, tho every day new results are emerging (e.g., we now probably know where he got his Koryak data).  Incidentally, the data themselves remain interesting (the Tibetan are being studied by another Russian linguist, while I have been working on the Mandarin, Koryak, and various other languages).  In some cases they are the earliest records we have of these languages, in some they are the ONLY records of dialects that later went extinct.

Video-Link: https://ustream.univie.ac.at/media/core.html?id=d0ec8c57-92cd-4b36-b147-9f4dd32f6f50

Presentation for the Ringvorlesung 070037 VO Kulturgeschichte des Euro-Atlantischen Raumes (Andreas Komlosy, Andreas Obenaus): https://ufind.univie.ac.at/de/course.html?lv=070037&semester=2021S

This book sets out to tell the story of the unfolding of the early transatlantic world from the perspective of the Franciscan Order. This story is intriguing since the Franciscans were a socio-religious movement with a unique and controversial doctrine of voluntary poverty. The Franciscans freed themselves of the possessions that rooted other people to place, donned coarse habits to symbolise their poverty, and crept around the world. They rapidly developed global dimensions in the Middle Ages, travelling to North Africa, the Near East, Scandinavia, and Central Asia, and they reached China before Marco Polo. In the thirteenth century they became established in the Mediterranean world, and the Near Atlantic. Franciscans were well established on the Spanish Atlantic coast, and their convent at La Rábida became a central coordinate in the story of the European ‘discovery’ of the New World. Franciscan history challenges the chronological boundaries of many existing global histories, pointing to the importance of the global Middle Ages. Yet they are most important since, as a consequence of their doctrine of poverty, they offer an alternative perspective on the history of the world.

This paper will look at the last phase of Russian territorial expansion into Central Asia, the annexation of the Pamir plateau and the neighbouring principalities of Shughnan, Roshan and Wakhan. This is usually understood as an episode in the ‘Great Game’ between the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia, and indeed it was the region where their territories finally almost met. However, the Russians and the British reached an agreement on their Central Asian frontier in the Pamirs quickly, easily and amicably, and had no really irreconcilable interests in the region. Instead Russian hostility was directed primarily against Afghanistan, with whose forces Russian troops had a number of skirmishes in the 1890s, and against the officials of their own protectorate, the Bukharan Emirate, which was given Shughnan, Roshan and Wakhan to administer after the Pamir boundary was settled in 1895. I argue that the views of Russian officers who served in the region (many of whom came from the western borderlands of the empire in Poland and Finland) were heavily influenced by Aryan racial theories – they considered the Shughni, Roshani and Wakhi to be the last remnants of the autochthonous Aryan inhabitants of Central Asia, driven into these mountain fastnesses by successive waves of Turkic migration, with a racial and moral purity that set them apart from the ‘natives’ of neighbouring lowland regions in Bukhara and Ferghana. Successive Russian commanders at the Pamir Post and in Khorog developed a paternalist discourse which emphasized the need to protect the highlanders against corrupt, rapacious lowlanders, whether Afghan or Bukharan. This caused numerous clashes with their superiors in Tashkent and St Petersburg, but as a result of their constant pressure on the Bukharan authorities Shughnan, Roshan and Wakhan would be transferred to direct Russian administration after 1905.

ENGLISH:
At the north-western edge of Svalbard archipelago there are two small islands, Danskøya (Danes Island) and Amsterdamøya (Amsterdam Island), currently depopulated. In 1896 and 1897, Swedish engineer and explorer Salomon August Andrée chose small Virgohamna (Virgo Bay) on the northern shore of Danes Island, as starting point to reach the North Pole by a hydrogen balloon. Andrée’s expedition was quite ahead of his time, as well as reckless to some degree: it was to tragically fail and to disappear in mystery until the unexpected discovery of its remnants over thirty years later. Yet, the endeavor remarkably impressed the public of its time and inspired the following generation of explorers. In 2018, more than a century after Andrée’s flight, the Polarquest2018 expedition made a brief stop-over in the area and an expeditive survey with drones was conducted. The survey allowed to effectively acquire a view of the current conditions of the historical site, recognizing -among many other things - some minor remainings of the 1897 structures. The fading traces of Andrée’s base retain some archaeological value, but the main asset of the place is indeed its capability of impressing the visitor’s imagination. This is due to the fact that it is possible to identify dimensions, shapes and a few remnants of the once-existing Andrée’s infrastructure, and this occurs in an environmental and geographic context which underwent minimal change in more than a century. This allows to perceive, to some degree, its past nature as a place where the members of the expedition lived and operated, in such a way so as to be a relevant memorial in the history of Arctic exploration.

Covering the four centuries of history and vast space of Oceania (islands of Southeast Asia,
New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands), this book focuses on histories
of cultural encounters between Europeans and indigenous people. The author’s intention is to
show how different discourses concerning the human race influenced foreign travelers and
explorers. Confronting the Eurocentric approach to understanding “Others” with non-
European ones, the author successfully discredits stereotypes about the imperial center and
periphery and European superiority over non-European cultures. According to the author, the
book represents a set of interconnected episodes that brought ethnohistory into play with the
history of science through interactions between travelers and local inhabitants. In that sense,
this study is an important contribution to not only the history of Pacific world, but also to the
intellectual history of European expansion.

In this chapter we focus on the relationship between typological thought and the construction of official histories or master narratives. We understand that classifications and exclusions structure a way of looking at the past which is accepted as true, rarely questioned and assumed as representative of a whole. In this work we discuss the role of narratives and of archaeological materials in the construction of the master narratives about Antarctica. At the same time, we propose to challenge forms of typological thought that obscures plurality and presents a homogeneous past. Our perspective proposes, within archaeology, to make explicit the artificial nature of categorizations and established orderings, generating new analytical proposals and forms of knowledge. We maintain that, through the analysis of material culture, it is possible to question and to reconstruct the official history, offering alternative pasts and histories. This challenge implies also the inclusion of new actors or protagonists, which are the subdued groups made invisible in the official history of Antarctica.
The Antarctica was the last continent to be incorporated to the space dominated by modernity. Its official discovery, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, marks the beginning of a history that presents certain particularities, not only in its content, but also in the way that it is usually told. Some versions of this history are more extensively distributed and known then others, as well as being more widely accepted. We understand that recurrences—in form and in content—construct and structure the master narratives of Antarctica. They reinforce the definition and the classification of aspects, moments, events, and processes within this history, the selection of certain elements over others and an ordering that gives it meaning. In other words, the narratives do not limit themselves to what is told or to the manner of telling. Instead, they are a form of conceptualizing history. What is told and how it is told “create” one (the) history. As archaeologists, we must ask: what is the role of archaeological material in the construction and reproduction of this history?"

Enumerating the indigenous populations in mid-nineteenth century Colombia: evidence from the Codazzi manuscripts fund in the National Library of Turin.
Born in Romagna, Agostino Codazzi became a respected geographer and cartographer at first in Venezuela and then in Colombia, where he was in charge from 1849 onwards of the surveys of the national territory carried out by the Comisión Corográfica de la Nueva Granada. The National Library of Turin preserves a large fund of manuscripts, field notes, drawings and hand-made maps coming from the original patrimony of the Comisión and still partly unpublished. A sizable section of this documentation concerns the native groups of the Colombian Amazon. As Codazzi went to the Amazon region almost on his own, he had to rely on information, both oral and written, he collected from others during his travel. Such information is often of demographic interest. In some cases only broad statements about the size and ethnic composition of the various populations are offered. In other cases, however, and in particular for the indigenous settlements controlled by the government and/or by the missionaries, numerical values are also provided, sometimes in tables where houses, families and individuals are enumerated in a fairly detailed way, which permits interesting analyses and comparisons. Numerical estimates are, on the other hand, highly uncertain when they refer to those indigenous groups that were still independent and were considered to be dangerous. In spite of its limitations, this evidence on the inhabitants of the Colombian Amazon towards the middle of the nineteenth century is nevertheless precious, all the more so if one considers that in such period the exploration of these vast areas, either by missionaries or by governmental officers, was on the wane. The Italian geographer acknowledged his debt to his local guides, to his indigenous sources and to the ‘notables’ he met in those remote lands, and preserved the documents written by his informants.

This paper offers a new perspective on historical understandings of the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body, by studying the way that British explorers of tropical Africa drank alcohol and wrote about drink between c.1850 and c.1910. We demonstrate that alcohol was simultaneously classified as a medicinal, a preventative and a pleasurable drink, shaped by competing medical theories, but that distinctions between these different roles were highly blurred. We also show how many explorers thought certain drinks helped to protect white bodies from the effects of tropical diseases. While popular amongst travellers, these views came under growing scrutiny in the latter part of the nineteenth century, reflecting both changing scientific views about the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body and the development of a much larger European presence in tropical Africa. However, even those who opposed tropical drinking often supported the use of other stimulants and vi...

EditoriA è lieta di annunciare la pubblicazione di Nelle terre incognite. Esploratori, avventurieri, missionari e ammiragli italiani nel Sud-Est asiatico (1865-1885), saggio storico di Alessandro Di Meo che ricostruisce ampiamente la storia delle esplorazioni scientifiche, naturalistiche, etnografiche e commerciali intraprese dal Regno d'Italia nell'Asia sudorientale, con l'obiettivo di stringere accordi diplomatici con i paesi della penisola indocinese, in particolare la Birmania e il Siam, nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento. Contemporaneamente, furono avviate trattative con i sultani e i rajah delle Molucche, di Aceh e del Borneo, con l'obiettivo di ottenere concessioni territoriali da adibire a stabilimenti penali, per la deportazione dei detenuti, oppure ad avamposti commerciali, per inserire l'Italia nelle rotte mercantili dell'Estremo Oriente. Il volume tratta ampiamente il dibattito politico interno scaturito da queste iniziative e analizza le dinamiche contrastanti, sorte dalle reazioni delle altre potenze europee con interessi geopolitici nell'area. Alessandro Di Meo, nato nel 1988, dopo la laurea magistrale in Storia Contemporanea presso la Sapienza-Università di Roma con una tesi dedicata alla concessione di Tientsin, ha conseguito il dottorato di ricerca presso l'Università della Tuscia di Viterbo. Attualmente è Early Career Member presso la Royal Historical Society di Londra. La GBEditoriA, da sempre interessata ad approfondire tematiche storiche poco conosciute, pubblica con grande piacere un volume che, per la prima volta, ricostruisce in modo esaustivo le vicende delle esplorazioni italiane nel Sudest asiatico e le relative conseguenze a livello politico e diplomatico.

Much of the historiography of European encounters in the Pacific focuses on the period from 1768 onward, when the emerging British scientific community and the growing British Empire consolidated their relationship. In this arena, Joseph Banks remains the example par excellence, thanks to his participation in the Endeavour voyage and his central place in a wide-reaching network of botanists, artists, politicians, and patricians. Banks’ career and life after the Endeavour’s return until his death in 1820 is long and nuanced, deserving the growing body of scholarship dedicated to the intricate and expansive networks he grew. Such has been the focus on the period after 1770, however, that it is not merely pedantic to reinforce that the South Seas were a salient, if not quotidian, topic within British culture prior to 1768, when the Endeavour set sail for Tahiti. This article, therefore, is concerned less with the legacies of Banks and the Endeavour and more with the legacies he chased and the discourses he entered into when he joined the Transit expedition. It will compare Banks’ experiences with shipboard botany and publication with those of William Dampier, who sailed at the turn of the eighteenth century.

ENGLISH:

The  small  Danskøya  (Danes  Island)  and  Amsterdamøya  (Amsterdam  Island)  are  located  at  the  north-western  edge  of  the  Svalbard  archipelago.  Both  islands  are  today  completely  uninhabited.  In  1896  and  1897,  Swedish  engineer  Salomon  August  Andrée  elected  the  small  bay  of  Virgohamna,  on  the  northern  shore  of  Danskøya,  as  a  starting  point  for  his  tragic  attempt  to  reach  the  North  Pole  in  a  balloon.  In  1906,  1907  and  1909  the  American  journalist  Walter  Wellman,  with  his  airship  “America”,  tried  unsuccessfully  to  fly  to  the  North  Pole.  In  year  2000,  the  Norwegian  governor  of  Svalbard  (Sysselmannen)  regulated  access  to  the  historical  site,  which  can  now  only  be  visited  with  prior,  special  authorization.  During  summer  2018,  the  Polarquest2018  Arctic  expedition  carried  out  an  aerophotographic  survey  of  the  area  by  means  of  drones.  Without  the  need  of  landing  any  crew  nor  equipment  on  the  beach,  two  small  quadcopters  were  launched  from  the  support  boat  and  later  returned  there  at  the  end  of  their  flights.  The  survey  made  it  possible  to  acquire  an  effective  “snapshot”  of  the  conservation  status  of  the  site  more  than  121  years  after  the  first  historical  expedition.  Acquired  data  were  processed  by  an  “image-based  modelling”  software  to  obtain  expe-ditive  ortophotographs  and  3-D  models.  This  work  presents  the  research  method  and  may contribute to documenting an important site in the history of Arctic explorations

ITALIANO:
Presso  l’estremità  nord-occidentale  dell’arcipelago  delle  Svalbard  si  trova-no  le  piccole  Danskøya  (Isola  Danese)  e  Amsterdamøya  (Isola  Amsterdam),  entrambe  oggi  completamente  disabitate.  Nel  1896  e  1897  l’ingegnere  svedese  Salomon  August  Andrée  elesse  la  piccola  insenatura  di  Virgohamna,  sulla  riva  settentrionale  di  Danskøya,  a  base  di  partenza  per  il  suo  tragico  tentativo  di  giungere  al  Polo  Nord  in  mongolfiera.  Nel  1906,  1907  e  1909  lo  statunitense  Walter  E.  Wellman,  con  la  sua  aeronave  “America”,  tentò  di  volare  verso  il  Polo,  andando  ripetutamente  incontro  al  fallimento.  Nel  2000  il  governatore  norvegese  delle  Svalbard  (Sysselmannen)  ha  regolamentato l’accesso al sito storico, che può essere visitato solo pre-via,  speciale  autorizzazione.  Nel  2018  la  spedizione  artica  Polarquest2018  ha  effettuato  un  rilevamento  aerofotografico  speditivo  della  zona  mediante  droni.  Senza  che  gli  operatori  dovessero  scendere  a  terra,  due  piccoli  quadricotteri  sono  stati  lanciati  dalla  barca  appoggio  e  ivi  recuperati  al  termine  della  ricogni-zione.  Il  rilievo  ha  permesso  di  acquisire  un’efficace  “istantanea”  dello  stato  di  conservazione  del  sito  a  oltre  121  anni  dalla  prima  delle  spedizioni,  riconoscendone  peraltro  alcuni  elementi.  I  dati acquisiti, sottoposti ad elaborazione con procedure di “image-based  modelling”,  hanno  permesso  di  validare  il  metodo  di  lavoro  e  possono  contribuire  a  documentare  un  sito  importante  per la memoria delle esplorazioni verso il Polo Nord

Se analiza la referencia de Estrabon al Periplo de Ophelas, que ha motivado una enorme literatura. A partir de diversos datos se argumenta que el texto parte de un error de transmisión, y que por las cuestiones que se recogen en realidad el geógrafo se estaba refiriendo al Periplo de Hannon.

In the mid-eighteenth century the Royal Navy was the largest industrial unit in the world, as well as a central pillar of British identity. Royal Navy ships protected British trade, waged war, and, increasingly, charted unknown regions. A naval officer could participate in several of these activities throughout his career, but not all were considered equally worthy of commemoration. An excellent example of the conscious act of hero-making are the commemorative medals struck in 1768 by the brother of Baron George Anson. Anson had died in 1762, so these medals were not only a memorial to his life, but they also were a deliberate attempt to control his legacy. What the medals include, and omit, offers a fascinating opportunity to examine what some thought worthy of commemoration in eighteenth-century British culture.  Whereas the active naval officer had long been a subject of praise, the exact events that led to public celebration changed in the eighteenth century. Not only did these include victory in combat but also successful completion of expeditions of discovery, thus building on older traditions of lauding long-distance voyages. However, certain aspects of a naval career did not find wider cultural salience, such as administrative duties. This chapter uses the medals as a prism through which to examine the interconnections between naval careers, material culture, and the process of commemoration. In addition, the paper offers a revaluation of the historiographical role of exploration in the eighteenth century and repositions exploration as an explicitly naval activity in the British context.