ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

An 1860 eclipse expedition by a “simple amateur”: d’Abbadie at Briviesca

• In Event: Emerging from the Shadow: New Perspectives on Solar Eclipse Expeditions 1

English Abstract

The French scientific field in the mid-19th century was profoundly reshaped by state centralisation, which historian Robert Fox has called the ‘Triumph of the Centre’. As demonstrated in recent scholarship, the expeditions to observe the total solar eclipse of 1860 were organised in a concert of nations. The various governments agreed to allow their scientists to be on the line of centrality.

In this contribution, we propose to shift the focus by looking at a non-governmental expedition, that of a French independent, Antoine d'Abbadie (1810-1897). A landowner near the French-Spanish border, he observed the eclipse on 18 July 1860 from Briviesca (Castile) with other peripheral figures, Gaston Lespiault (1823-1904) from the University of Bordeaux and Frédéric Petit (1810-1865) from the Toulouse Observatory.

How did these astronomers negotiate their participation with the Parisian institutions, and what support did they find in Spain? This expedition, and its unpublished archives, allow us to observe how peripheral actors seized upon the eclipse to strengthen their position.

Author

• Frédéric Soulu, Academie des sciences of Paris