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Annual General Meeting 2008
The one hundred and sixty-second Annual General Meeting of the Hakluyt Society took place at the House of the Royal Geographical Society, London, on Wednesday, 2nd July 2008. In attendance were the council and officers of the Society, together with members of the Society and their guests.
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The Formal Proceedings
The President of the Hakluyt Society, Professor Roy Bridges, was in the chair and began the proceedings by welcoming members and their guests. The meeting approved the minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting and the Statement of Accounts for 2007, following which the President presented his report on the developments of the past year. Of particular note was his statement that the Society's archives, which for many years have been housed somewhat anonymously at the Royal Geographical Society, will be removed to the British Library where they will eventually become freely available to researchers.
Professor Bridges, whose extended term of office comes to an end this year, stood down as President and proposed Professor Will Ryan as his successor. Professor Bridges remained in the chair for the duration of the meeting, and we were delighted to hear that he will continue his close association with the Society as Vice-president and Custodian Trustee. On the proposal of council the meeting re-elected a number of officers into their existing positions, and elected Dr Margaret Deacon, Dr Roger Morris and Lt Cdr Lawrence Phillips as members of Council. With the elevation of Professor Ryan, our previous series editor, to the office of President, the responsibility for editing the Society's publications now falls to the capable hands of Dr Gloria Clifton and Professor Joyce Lorimer, who were elected Honorary Joint Series Editors. Mr David Darbyshire was re-elected as Honorary Treasurer and presented his annual report on the Society's financial situation.
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Professor Roy Bridges |
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 The formal proceedings over, Professor Glyn Williams took the floor to pay tribute to Roy Bridges's longstanding association with the Society and the exceptional service he had rendered during his term as President. As a measure of the Society's gratitude he was presented with a map, drawn by Abraham Ortelius and dating from 1570, depicting the central and northeastern parts of Africa. It was a fitting token of appreciation for one whose specialisation has long been the history and exploration of the African continent.
The Retiring President
Roy Bridges, BA, PhD, FRGS, FRHistS, was born in Aylesbury on 26 September 1932 and educated at Harrow Weald County Grammar School in Middlesex before proceeding to Keele University where in 1957 he gained first-class honours in history and geography. A PhD from the University of London followed in 1963. Military service in Malaya and the influence of Professor John Blake (who edited two Hakluyt Society volumes issued in 1941-2) turned his interests towards overseas history and this concern was reinforced by a five-year spell (1960-65) lecturing at Makerere University in Uganda. He joined the Hakluyt Society in 1964, was to serve on its Council more than once from 1977 and was a co-editor and contributor to the 150th Anniversary volume, Compassing the Vaste Globe of the Earth in 1996. Employed by the University of Aberdeen from 1964, Roy taught African, European and various other branches of history and was fortunate to be associated with the distinguished historian of West Africa, John Hargreaves. For twelve years Roy was head of the Department of History and served on the councils of various academic and educational organisations. He and his wife Jill (née Lewis), married in 1960 with two sons and two daughters, now live in the Aberdeenshire community of Newmachar of which Roy has written a history. Much involved in local affairs, he says his life whilst President of the Hakluyt Society has been a somewhat schizophrenic, albeit a greatly enjoyable one, divided between Aberdeenshire and London.
Roy has a particular interest in the explorers of East Africa and has published extensively about them. The subject is bedevilled, he believes, by some real and imagined unfortunate connections. Writers of popular biographies continue fascinated by the personalities of men like Livingstone, Stanley, Burton and Speke but seldom understand the background to exploration, much less the African societies which the travellers encountered. In the 1960s those who were developing the new subject of African history understandably tended to regard explorers from Europe as irrelevant or too much associated with imperialism. In many respects, explorers have remained rather ‘politically incorrect’, part of a discredited colonial past. However, Roy, who taught African history with a great commitment to its importance, believes the story of explorers can be told, and should be told, in the context of the societies which they encountered as well as the context of the metropolitan pressures upon them. On a wider stage, one may deplore Columbus and his successors and properly insist on the importance of the historical experiences of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. But to try to write Columbus and the effects of the European arrival in the Americas out of history is perverse. Hence the absolutely vital role of the Hakluyt Society in trying to increase our understanding of the significance of interchanges between different parts of the world both in terms of the development of scientific knowledge and the encounters between societies.
Roy is particularly pleased to have been able during his presidency to edit and publish the text of the journal kept by the ex-slave, Jacob Wainwright, the first black African writer to figure in a Hakluyt Society edition. He has several other scholarly projects in hand, not least further work on the history of the Hakluyt Society itself and its famous logo and the journal kept by the explorer from Nairn educated in Aberdeen, James Augustus Grant.
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The Annual Lecture
The Society was delighted to welcome as its guest speaker Dr Daniel Carey of the National University of Ireland, Galway. He took as his subject 'Continental Travel and Journeys beyond Europe in the Early Modern Period: an Overlooked Connection', and for fifty minutes he held the audience spellbound by his wit and humour, and by an eloquence that extended well beyond his native English. He opened with a detailed analysis of the impetus that lay behind the rise of European secular travel in the sixteenth century, and he discussed the moral and social benefits that it was assumed would accrue from a first-hand experience of the wider world. He quoted extensively from the many curious printed texts that presumed to contribute systematic guidance to the would-be seeker after knowledge, including those that actually warned the 'impressionable' young against such adventures, or even advised that it was safer to stay at home and read the accounts of others. Dr Carey then considered the careers of some of those that dared to venture further afield, into realms of the 'barbarous' Turks, or even to the empire of the Great Moghul, where they found not barbarousness but simply a 'different type of civility'. Although many travelled with a particular end in mind, for trade or for the acquisition of military or diplomatic intelligence, the more enlightened aspired to the philosophy that travel would one day unite the world into a single entity which would preserve only the best of the disparate traditions it embraced. Dr Carey closed his memorable lecture by reflecting on the ridicule that many travellers were forced to suffer upon their return, particularly those that continued to engage in an excessive adoption of exotic customs.
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Dr Daniel Carey |
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Will Ryan with Professor and Mrs Bridges |
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The Reception
After conveying his thanks to Dr Carey and taking a few questions from the floor, the retiring President brought the meeting to a close and invited members and guests to a reception in the hall adjacent. Over canapés and wine or fruit juice, the reception provided an ideal opportunity to meet up with old friends, discuss the latest news, exchange views on matters relating to the Society, and to chat with the officers and our visiting lecturer in a less formal setting.
Full details of the proceedings of the Annual General Meeting will be circulated to all members of the Society towards the end of the year. Members will also receive a printed copy of the complete text of Dr Carey's lecture. |
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;)
;)
;)
;)