The representations of Luzon and Formosa in William Hacke's atlas (c.1690): New projects for British navigation in the Pacific
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Gallery
- Room
- B104
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
From the end of the 17th century, the British increased their incursions into the Pacific. From the Indian Ocean, British navigations had advanced towards the coasts of China to trade, while from Tierra del Fuego, Buccaneers from Jamaica or Virginia headed for the coasts of Peru and New Spain in search of booty. The Buccaneers later also became interested in extending their voyages to the coasts of Asia.
In their advance towards the Pacific, the British, who crossed Tierra del Fuego, initially relied on Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish maritime and cartographic information that described the American coasts. Later, they also made their own records, based on their observations and on materials or reports (or informants) obtained during their voyages. One of the most famous examples of this kind of event occurred in 1683 when the British captured a Spanish ship off the coast of Guayaquil, which was carrying a chart describing the coasts from California to Patagonia. This chart was sent to London and given to the cartographer William Hack to translate and publish. The first atlas closely followed the Spanish document, but Hack later produced other atlases that incorporated new information obtained during British voyages. The new atlases included more extensive representations of the Pacific. In a way, this gives us an idea of the plans that the British were formulating for that ocean. It was in this context that Hack also produced an atlas of the Asian coasts (c.1690), depicting the coasts from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan.
Although this atlas undoubtedly requires further study, in this presentation, I would like to focus on examining the maps depicting the islands of Luzon and Formosa, and linking their records to some British voyages that crossed Tierra del Fuego and recorded the area between these islands as a possible route to reach the coast of China. This made the islands' geostrategic points, and it is therefore worth reviewing how they were recorded, as well as comparing their records with descriptions that suggest ways of using or transiting the area.
Contact
- Organiser: Philippine Studies at SOAS
- Contact: philippinestudies@soas.ac.uk
Header image credit: Detail of Map of Luzon William Hacke's atlas (c.1690)
About the speaker
Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos holds a PhD in History from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She is currently a researcher at UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas (IIH) and teaches in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL). Her research focuses on the maritime history of New Spain in the early modern period—especially across the Pacific—including navigation, ports, maritime labour, cultural exchanges, and maritime landscapes. She has held fellowships at the John Carter Brown Library (2013), the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale (2015), and the University of Salamanca (2019), and she collaborates with research networks such as Conexa Mundi and Geompam. She also coordinates collective projects including Maritime Culture in Mexico and American Pacific Islands: articulating spaces in the maritime networks of modern times.
