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Enlightenment geography in the study: A.F. Busching, J.D. Michaelis and the place of geographical knowledge in the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia, 1761-1767

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posted on 2018-02-26, 14:50 authored by Dean Bond
This paper discusses the practical making of geographical knowledge 'at home' in the context of two interwoven Enlightenment endeavours, namely the fifth part of Anton Friedrich Busching's Neue Erdbeschreibung concerning the geography of Asia (Hamburg, 1768) and the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia (1761-1767) organized by Johann David Michaelis. It illustrates how Busching and Michaelis sought to integrate knowledge of the study and the field in ways that allowed them to produce more accurate knowledge of Asia's historical and contemporary geography, and to legitimate the credibility and necessity - rather than the superiority - of textual critique in the study. In so doing, it criticises recent work that has stressed the epistemological divide between the study and the field in the Danish expedition and in Enlightenment science more broadly. The paper argues that understanding the relations between the historical constitution of the study, the production of geographical knowledge through correspondence, and the critical evaluation of knowledge from the field is crucial for understanding the making of Enlightenment geography.

Funding

The Leibniz-Institut fur Europaische Geschichte (Mainz) and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Journal of Historical Geography

Volume

51

Pages

64 - 75

Citation

BOND, D.W., 2015. Enlightenment geography in the study: A.F. Büsching, J.D. Michaelis and the place of geographical knowledge in the Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia, 1761-1767. Journal of Historical Geography, 51, pp.64-75.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This paper was published in the journal Journal of Historical Geography and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2015.09.002.

ISSN

0305-7488

Language

  • en

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