Science Teaching in Early Modern Europe

Maps and Texts: Geography Teaching in the Early Modern Universities

Geography was an important part of the formal and information curricula of early modern universities. At the best studies examples, Oxford and Cambridge, geography had a place in the formal statutes of the Arts curricula of many colleges and in the universities more generally. Students at the universities also read geography texts more informally, collectively owned substantial numbers of books of geography and cartography. Maps were less formally part of the university offerings, although they too were owned, both by students and by institutions. Maps did not primarily fulfill curricular requirements but were employed in the study of mathematical geography generally and for illustrations of biblical, classical, and contemporary history. On the other hand, while map reading and mapmaking were not fundamental to the geography curriculum, men who went on to certain kinds of careers in mapping, like Thomas Harriot and Edward Wright in England, Pedro Nuñes in Spain, and Gerardus Mercator in the Low Countries, learned from and about maps while at university.
In this paper, I will examine some of the evidence for the teaching of geography at the early modern university, through book and map ownership, commonplace books, and some biographical information. I will argue, however, that the universities were not the only or even the most important focus of geographical and cartographical knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rather, the connections between universities and scholars on the one hand, and merchants, explorers, and mathematical practitioners on the other, provided the synergies necessary to expand and transform the knowledge and understanding of the early modern globe.