The Society is very aware that young people are the future of the Society, and for this reason Council has approved a scheme of student membership to be introduced from 1 January 2013. The cost of subscription will be half that charged to full members and will entitle student members to receive the same benefits as full members. The Society will be publicising the scheme through heads of departments and through such other media as are possible. To qualify for student membership, applicants will need to provide certification that they are in full-time education, or are involved in full-time postgraduate study, at school or at a recognised university or establishment of higher education. The nature of this certification is discretionary but will normally be a statement of student status obtained from the institution's registry which specifies the duration of the applicant's course and expected end date. A scanned copy, emailed to the Society's Administrative Office on enrolment and (if necessary) at future renewal dates, will be acceptable. If you are in any doubt about your eligibility for student membership, or you are having problems obtaining the necessary certification, please email the Administrative Office for advice (address on the Contact page).
Hakluyt Society Annual General Meeting, 19 June 2013
The 167th Annual General Meeting of the Hakluyt Society will take place at 5.15 pm on Wednesday 19 June 2013 at the University of Notre Dame London Centre, 1 Suffolk Street, London, SW1Y 4HG. The meeting will be followed by the Annual Lecture for 2013, 'A Just and Honourable Commerce: Abolitionist Experimentation in Sierra Leone in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century', to be delivered by Suzanne Schwarz, Professor of History at the University of Worcester. The meeting and lecture is open to members and guests free of charge. A reception will follow the lecture, tickets for which, priced £18 per person, may be obtained by returning the form enclosed with the April newsletter, or by sending a cheque to the administrative office no later than 7 June. Please note: Due to the strict security arrangements operated by the University of Notre Dame, all members wishing to attend only the AGM and lecture must notify the administrative office of their intention by letter by 7 June, or by email by 14 June, otherwise they may not be permitted entry to the building.Those attending the reception will be automatically recorded for security purposes and need take no further action.
Directions: The University of Notre Dame is conveniently located close to Trafalgar Square. Facing the main entrance to the National Gallery, turn left into Pall Mall and walk the short distance to Suffolk Street. Turn right into Suffolk Street, and the entrance to the University is a short distance on your right.
Symposium to launch the publication of Japanese Travellers in Sixteenth-Century Europe, 13 December 2012.
By courtesy of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, a symposium to launch Derek Massarella's Japanese Travellers in Sixteenth-Century Europe (details below) was held on 13 December 2012 at the Foundation's premises facing Regent's Park, London. The symposium, with more than eighty Foundation and Society members in attendance, was opened at 6 pm by the President, Captain Mike Barritt, who spoke of the work of the Hakluyt Society and its contributions to the study of early cross-cultural encounter, of which Dr Massarella's book was a fine example. Dr Massarella then spoke for thirty minutes, during which he provided a rewarding insight into the historical background to his work, the one-time flourishing Jesuit mission in Japan, the remarkably successful tour of the young Japanese legates through European countries and ultimately to Rome, and the events that followed*. The meeting was then opened to the floor, and to the numerous questions arising from the talk. The reception that followed provided the opportunity for guests to speak personally to Dr Massarella, and to acquire his signature on copies of the book available for sale. *For the benefit of those members unable to attend the launch, the full text of Prof. Massarella's lecture has been published in the Journal of the Hakluyt Society.
Left to right: Will Ryan (past president), Ray Howgego (editor), Derek Massarella (author/editor), Gloria Clifton (series editor), Mike Barritt (current president), Jason James (Director General, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation), Richard Bateman (Council officer).
A new critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598–1600) is currently under preparation for publication by Oxford University Press, comprising fourteen volumes under the general editorship of professors Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt. Full details of this important venture, known as the Hakluyt Edition Project, are now available at www.hakluyt.org.
New publications from the Hakluyt Society
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Japanese Travellers in Sixteenth-Century Europe: A Dialogue Concerning the Mission of the Japanese Ambassadors to the Roman Curia (1590). Edited by Derek Massarella. Translated by J. F. Moran
In 1582 Alessandro Valignano, the Visitor to the Jesuit mission in the East Indies, sent four Japanese boys, two of whom represented important Christian daimyo in western Japan, to Europe. This book is an account of their travels. The boys left Japan on 20 February 1582 and disembarked in Lisbon on 11 August 1584. They then travelled through Portugal, Spain and Italy as far as Rome, the highpoint of their journey, before returning to Lisbon to begin the long voyage home on 13 April 1586. They reached Nagasaki on 21 July 1590, amidst great rejoicing, more than eight years after their departure. During their travels in Europe they had audiences and less formal meetings with Philip II, king of Spain and Portugal, and with popes Gregory XIII and Sixtus V, and were received by many of the most important political, ecclesiastical and social figures in the places they visited. Until the arrival of the embassy in Europe, the Euro-Japanese encounter had been almost exclusively one way: Europeans going to Japan. The embassy was an integral part of Valignano's strategy for advancing the Jesuit mission in Japan. The boys chosen were intended to personify Jesuit success in Japan, raise awareness of Japan in Europe amongst the clerical and secular elites, and demonstrate conclusively that what the Jesuits had been writing about Japan since their arrival there in 1549 was not a fabrication. The embassy was further intended to impress upon the boys the glory, unity, stability and splendour of Christian Europe, so that they might report favourably about their experiences on their return, and counter what Valignano believed were the negative impressions of Europe left by Portuguese merchants and seamen in Japan. As part of this plan, a book consisting of thirty-four colloquia detailing the boys' travels was compiled and translated into Latin under Valignano's supervision. It was published in Macao in 1590 with the title De Missione Legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanum curiam. Valignano anticipated that it would become a standard text in Jesuit seminaries in Japan. The present edition is the first complete version of this rich, complex and impressive work to appear in English, and is accompanied with maps and illustrations of the mission, and an introduction discussing its context and the subsequent reception of the book.
Pedro Páez's History of Ethiopia, 1622. Edited by Isabel Boavida, Hervé Pennec & Manuel João Ramos. Translated by Christopher J. Tribe (2 vols).
In two volumes the Hakluyt Society is delighted to offer the first English translation of the História da Etiópia by the Spanish Jesuit missionary priest Pedro Páez (1564-1622) who worked in the Portuguese missions, first in India and then in Ethiopia. The History of Ethiopia, dealing with a country long thought to be the abode of the legendary Prester John, was written in Portuguese in the last ten years of Páez's life and survives in only two manuscripts. The translation here is based on the critical edition published by the same three editors at Lisbon in 2008.
Páez's History provides not only a detailed history of the Catholic missions in Ethiopia, but also a thorough account of the country's customs, arts and religion; its political and territorial administration; and its geography and geographical exploration. The book also reworks a wide variety of documents, including the first translations of a number of Ethiopian literary texts, from royal chronicles to hagiographies. Needless to say, the work is an absolutely essential source for those interested in the history of Ethiopia. It is a study of epic proportions, and its translation represents a landmark in the history of the Hakluyt Society. Páez's text occupies a full 800 pages of the two volumes, and is supplemented by a 55-page introduction, an alphabetical historical glossary, an 18-page bibliography, and a 21-page index. It includes two maps and seventeen monochrome plates. 'Impeccable and exhaustively thorough... the so-called mystique and allure surrounding early modern Christian Ethiopia comes to life, opening up a new field of uncharted territory on critical studies about early European contact in sub-Saharan Africa' (Nicholas Jones, Renaissance Quarterly).
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt.
An interdisciplinary collection of twenty-four essays which brings together leading international scholarship on Hakluyt and his work. The essays advance the study of Hakluyt's literary and historical resources, his international connections, and his rhetorical and editorial practice. The volume is divided into five sections: 'Hakluyt's Contexts'; 'Early Modern Travel Writing Collections'; 'Editorial Practice'; 'Allegiances and Ideologies: Politics, Religion, Nation'; and 'Hakluyt: Rhetoric and Writing'. It concludes with an account of the formation and ethos of the Hakluyt Society. This book, available in August 2012, is published by Ashgate as Hakluyt Society, Extra Series 47. It is not issued free to members but is available at a members' discount. For further details please click here.
Updated: 24 May 2013
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