Scientific Knowledge and Western European Travel Writing on Africa in Translation, 1600-1820

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Alison Martin
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Modern and Contemporary History ; Communication Sciences
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 461560091

This project will study translations of travel accounts on Africa published in four language areas (English, French, German and Dutch) between 1600 and 1820, to consider how they shaped the making of knowledge about a continent still largely uncharted in Western Europe well into the late Enlightenment. The timeframe reflects a period which saw the acceleration of knowledge exchange through translation across Britain, France and the German- and Dutch-speaking regions, in which scientific travel writing played a central role. The geographical focus on Africa is significant: for most of the period covered by this project, the continent was still associated with the strange and exotic, long after large parts of Asia and the Americas had been integrated into European notions of the ‘known’ world. To date, no large-scale comparative study of Western European writing on Africa exists that traces from the start of the 17th century to the close of the ‘long eighteenth century’ how the translation of travel writing brought gains in scientific knowledge about the continent. Using insights from translation studies and history of science, this project investigates the contribution of translation to the making of scientific knowledge and examines how early modern societies reflected on the translator’s role in mobilising ideas for an emerging global knowledge society.At the heart of the project lies a focus on the practice of translation as carried out in the scientific travelogues under consideration: what kinds of information about Africa were being circulated internationally in scientific travel accounts in Western Europe, who were the mediating agents and within which knowledge regimes were they working? How did these translations highlight fault-lines between transnational knowledge economies and specific national knowledge cultures? How did travelogues on Africa circulating between English, French, German and Dutch promote developments in and reflection on the translation of scientific knowledge in the early modern period?We will mount a range of events to explore these questions, including workshops, an international conference, a public-facing exhibition, and a website mapping the nodes and links in the movement of texts. In addition, we will publish a number of articles and a co-edited book of essays to reflect the work of the project.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2130: Cultures of Translation in Early Modern Times
• International Connection: France, Poland, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Wendy Bracewell; Professor Dr. Siegfried Huigen; Privatdozentin Dr. Susan Pickford; Professor Dr. Charles Withers