Page - 177 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

177The North Beckons kingdom, the uncharted and unwelcoming territories of the north offered un- bounded, quasi-domestic opportunities to cultivate aspirations arising from this recognition. The observation of the 1761 transit of Venus was, in fact, also an item on the extensive to-do list of Niebuhr and his associates, although naturally they were supposed to accomplish this task not from the north but from Tranquebar, a Danish fort and trading settlement on the Coromandel Coast in southwest In- dia. Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–95), formally a professor of medicine and experimental physics, who was asked to comment on the mathematical and astronomical sections of the program for the expedition, ended his de- tailed report of November 28, 1760 by stressing: Finally, the transit of Venus in front of the Sun belongs to the mathemati- cal observations that may be conducted upon arrival in Tranquebar […]. The farther apart the two observations are, the more useful they will be. […] On this issue, I am pointing out that it would be a great honor to the nation with regard to astronomy if another observer was sent to Trond- heim or Vardøhus.13 In a lecture in March 1761 at the Royal Danish Society of Sciences, alongside Vardøhus, Arkhangelsk (in the Russian north), Iceland, Japan, and Batavia (now Jakarta), Kratzenstein again mentioned Tranquebar as a potential site for observations14 and continued to lobby for bringing a Danish observer there. This was, however, ever more desperate: Niebuhr and his team, having set out from Copenhagen on January 4, had hardly even left Marseille by the time of the transit. Niebuhr thus saw the phenomenon from the midst of the 13 Kratzenstein, report on the plans for the Arabia Felix expedition, dated Copenhagen, No- vember 28, 1760 (translated from German into Danish in Rasmussen, Den Arabiske Rejse 1761–1767, 46–58, here 58). On Kratzenstein, see Susan Splinter, Zwischen Nützlichkeit und Nachahmung: Eine Biografie des Gelehrten Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–1795) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007). 14 In the protocol of the Royal Society of Sciences in Copenhagen (hereafter: dkdvs), it is stated under the entries for March 2, 9, and 16, 1761 that “Professor Kratzenstein read his piece on the transit of Venus through the Sun [which is to take place] in the month of June.” In the entry for February 9 in the same protocol, we find that Kratzenstein has de- livered the manuscript of his lecture to the society as well as a map of the various transit sites. The lecture was later published as Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, “Afhandling Om Veneris Gang igiennem Solen aar 1761. med En Beskrivelse af nye og bequaemme Maader at betragte same,” Skrifter, som udi det Kiøbenhavnske Selskab af Lærdoms og Videnskabers Elskere ere fremlagte og oplæste (hereafter: Skrifter Kiøb.) 9 (1765): 520–40, here 527.