Personalia
Anne Goldgar. Ph.D. from Harvard University. Professor of Early Modern History at King’s College London, University of London.
Descartes Theme Group Fellow (Jan, Feb, March 2017)
Arctic Knowledge in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands
Project Description
From the middle of the sixteenth century, Dutch traders and trading companies increasingly gathered knowledge to aid their commercial activities, producing networks of knowledge as well as of the exchange of goods. One focus of this activity was the Arctic, both for trade – with Russia, but also efforts to find a northeast passage to China – and for whaling. This project investigates this information-gathering within the context of arguments in the history of science about observation, while at the same time thinking about the commercial element of this empirical activity. It also considers the commodification of the information, in particular through printed voyage literature and its popularization.
Selected Publications
Anne Goldgar (2007) ‘Poelenburch’s Garden: Art, Flowers, Networks, and Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Holland’, in In His Milieu: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of John Michael Montias pp. 183-192
Anne Goldgar (2007) Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Anne Goldgar, Robert I Frost (2004) Institutional culture in early modern society Leiden; Boston: Brill
Anne Goldgar (1995) Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1685-1750; New Haven CT: Yale University Press