Abstract
Anglo-Swedish scholarly correspondence from the mid-eighteenth century contains repeated mentions of two merchants, Abraham Spalding and Gustavus Brander. The letters describe how these men facilitated the exchange of knowledge over the Baltic Sea and the North Sea by shipping letters, books and other scientific objects, as well as by enabling long-distance financial transactions. Through the case of Spalding and Brander, this article examines the material basis for early modern scholarly exchange. Using the concept of logistics to highlight and relate several mercantile practices, it examines ways of making scholarly knowledge move, and analyses merchants' potential motives for offering their services to scholarly communities. As logisticians in the Republic of Letters, these merchants could turn their commercial infrastructure into a generator of cultural status valid in both London and Stockholm. Using mercantile services, scholarly knowledge could in turn traverse the region in reliable, cost-effective and secure ways. The case of Spalding and Brander thus highlights how contacts between scholarly communities intersected with other contemporary modes of transnational exchange, and it shows how scholarly exchange relied on relationships based on norms different from the communalism often used to characterize the early modern Republic of Letters. Thus the article suggests new ways of studying early modern scholarly exchange in practice.
Highlights
In the evening at sunset we arrived at London
The letters describe how these men facilitated the exchange of knowledge over the Baltic Sea and the North Sea by shipping letters, books and other scientific objects, as well as by enabling longdistance financial transactions
The case of Spalding and Brander highlights how contacts between scholarly communities intersected with other contemporary modes of transnational exchange, and it shows how scholarly exchange relied on relationships based on norms different from the communalism often used to characterize the early modern Republic of Letters
Summary
The role of useful knowledge in Swedish culture of this time can be seen as a cross-fertilization of a German cameralist ideology, where useful knowledge was closely linked to the state apparatus, and the displays of science found in British lecture halls, coffee shops and magazines, which historians of science have termed ‘public science’.13 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was founded in 1739. The streets of London were filled with various forums where useful knowledge was displayed, discussed, and made, such as lectures, clubs and societies, as well as a bustling commerce of books and scientific instruments.[17] From the second half of the seventeenth century, the examination of nature through natural history and experimental philosophy came to be intimately linked to the British state and its imperial project.[18] In England, the scientific practitioner was still to a large degree expected to be a gentleman. It is through this context – of multiple loyalties and the need for numerous transnational and heterogeneous relationships – together with the previously discussed cultures of public science, that we can understand why Spalding and Brander offered their logistical services to British and Swedish scholars. As we will see in the following, their ability to act in both English and Swedish contexts, together with their capacity to offer scholars a logistical infrastructure, made it possible for men such as Spalding and Brander to partake in scholarly correspondence in several ways
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