ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Sea and Sky: Sailors using almanacs

• In Event: Recasting the History of Almanacs 2

English Abstract

Sailors were significant buyers of almanacs. Indeed, many almanacs explicitly reached out to sailors, and travellers more generally, offering information that ranged from the merely useful (lists of fairs and coach departures); to the scientific (tables of tides; latitude and longitude coordinates); to the touristic (lists of musical performances and sermons in some port towns); to the supernatural (astrological prognostications about “lucky” and “unlucky” days on which to embark on a sea voyage). This presentation focuses first on the knowledge almanac compilers imagined travellers – especially sailors – were interested in, and the blend of rational/scientific evidence and (to modern people) magical thinking upon which this knowledge rested. Second, it examines astrology, astronomical calculations, and celestial navigation as blended knowledge systems of special relevance to sailors. The fact that late medieval and early modern astrology, astronomy and celestial navigation shared data, methods, and basic assumptions with each other is well known, but has tended to be studied in relation to professional astrologer/astronomers, at least some of whom also moved in elite intellectual circles. Almanacs adopted many of the same epistemological assumptions that elite or semi-elite astrologers did, but they presented them in simplified form, often predicated, rightly or wrongly, on the assumption that their readers could not really handle the technical demands of these disciplines. As such, they helped popularize and facilitate geographical and celestial knowledge, oceanic travel, global trade, and, ultimately, imperial expansion.

Author

• Margaret Rose Hunt, Uppsala University