Sandars Lectures

The Sandars Readership in Bibliography was instituted in 1895 by Mr Samuel Sandars of Trinity College, and continues today in the annual series of Sandars Lectures

1. Sandars Lectures 2007
Sarah Tyacke
Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, Royal HollowayDistinguished Senior Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London
Topic: Conversations with maps: world views in early modern Europe
Website: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/sandars/Sandars_Lectures_2007.html
Very interesting!

2. Sandars Lectures 2008
Peter Kornicki
Professor of East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge
Topic: Having difficulty with Chinese? - the rise of the vernacular book in Japan, Korea and Vietnam
Website: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/sandars/Sandars_Lectures_2008.html
Ready to read.


From Tyacke's lecture
"In line...with the long-drawn out end of the European world Empires during the twentieth ceutnry, the various European maritime powers invested time and money, especially noticeable in the case of Portugal and Spain (and to some extent similarly privileged in the Netherlands, France, England and Italy), in the celebration of the graphic record of their lost empires or of their 'goldern ages' and, in so doing, gave us views of the world in the early modern period from their very nationalistic perspectives. This normally meant that contributions from other countries, or the possibility of other non-nationalistic modes of history, were discounted, ignored or even just absorbed into the writer's own country's history in some way; this could be done by regarding, for example, the cartography of one country as merely a source of whatever then became the dominant cartographic power, often the dominant military and economic power as well."

"What we might call 'firstism' an obsession with the first or earliest map, derived from the general cultural view in western cultures at least that to be first is to be praised and of itself confers benefits, often material in one way or another."

"mapping intrinsically lends itself to cultural promotion and diplomacy on a global scale, being graphic and thus, apparently, immediately comprehensible, rather than being obscured by the use of a specific langauge as in other texts.