Page - 174 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 4174 1 Scandinavian Self-Assertions For reasons intrinsic to the substance of Venus transit observations, the role of Scandinavia ought in principle to be eminent in any of them.5 This is not only because of the basic requirement of obtaining data from stations located as far apart as possible; in the case especially of the 1769 transit, which was predicted to take place during the European night, it was necessary to dispatch observers to the regions of the midnight Sun in order to catch the entire duration of the phenomenon. As a result, these parts received considerable attention from the international astronomical community. Even apart from this, it has been forcefully argued and colorfully illustrated in a now sizeable body of scholarship that an outstanding contribution to the expansion of natural knowledge was understood and pursued in the eigh- teenth century by the Scandinavian kingdoms with increasing vigor as a sub- stitute for expansion in a different sense, namely territorial aggrandizement at the expense of immediate neighbors, let alone meaningful participation in the European project of building colonial empires in the overseas world (despite several important outposts under both Danish–Norwegian and Swedish con- trol). “Linnean empire”—the symbolic ordering of the world through the elab- orate taxonomic system developed by the famous botanist Carl von Linné (Carolus Linnaeus [1717–78]), capable of embracing the whole of creation, and the attempt of the practical application of this system to the domestication of crops and species within the confined boundaries of Sweden—was an endeav- or to create a “local modernity” and an enlightened counterpart to the erst- while military might of Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632, r.1611–32) and Charles xii (1682–1718, r.1697–1718).6 Von Linné’s 1732 Lapland expedition was moti- vated by “the utility of scientific journeys within the fatherland”—sponsored may be detected in its record. Such aspects of scientific travel are now rightly becoming a preoccupation for scholars; see, e.g., Safier, Measuring the New World, 59–92. 5 For a comprehensive discussion of the contribution of northern Europe (following eigh- teenth-century notions, including not only Denmark–Norway and Sweden–Finland but also Russia) to the Venus transit enterprise of the 1760s, see Aspaas, “Maximilianus Hell,” 219–78. Only the presentation of the immediately relevant Danish antecedents there has been re- vised for the purposes of this book. 6 Lisbet Koerner, “Purposes of Linnean Travel: A Preliminary Research Report,” in Miller and Reill, Visions of Empire, 117–52; Koerner, “Linnaeus’ Floral Transplants,” Representations 47, special issue, “National Cultures before Nationalism” (1994): 144–69; and, more comprehen- sively, Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Let us note a close resemblance to the rationale behind the Habsburg government’s sponsorship of the von Jacquin expedition to the West Indies in 1755–59. See Klemun and Hühnel, Joseph Nikolaus Jacquin, 52–53.