Textbooks for Iberian Engineers: a comparative study (17th-18th centuries)

Description

The creation of a well-defined professional consciousness relies largely on its corpus of knowledge. Only those who receive a specific training are able to deal with the theoretical and practical questions of a specific professional field. Therefore schools, textbooks and syllabi play a decisive role in shaping the profile required for each profession.

The training of military engineers during the 17th and the 18th centuries was largely based on a set of French treatises, which epitomized the concept of the modern engineer, perceived as a man of action with a scientific training. Antoine de Ville, the Count of Pagan, Belidor and the Marquis de Vauban( De l’Attaque et de la défense des places (1685) set the pace of the European engineering training.

In 1641, one year after becoming king of Portugal, D. João IV (1640-1655), established the Aula de Artilharia e de Esquadria (Artillery and Geometry Class), which was directed by Luís Serrão Pimentel. Serrão Pimentel was a mathematician who had studied at the Colégio de Santo Antão, a Jesuit school deeply engaged in mathematical studies including matters relating to fortifications. Three years later (1647), the Artillery and Geometry Class was substituted by the Aula de Fortificação e Architectura Militar (Course of Military Fortification and Architecture), later also known as Academia Militar (Military Academy), also directed by Serrão Pimentel, then the Royal Chief Cosmographer. Later, as a result of his teaching position at the Course of Military Fortification and Architecture he was appointed Chief Engineer of the Portuguese court. The Course of Military Fortification and Architecture closely followed Serrão’s book Methodo Lusitano de desenhar as fortificações das praças regulares e irregulares (Portuguese Method for drawing Fortifications). This treatise on the art of fortification draw most of its information from renowned authors such as Freitag, Dogen, Marolois, Goldman, Coheornn and Stevin who epitomized the so-called Dutch method of fortification. Spanish authors, as well as the new trends of the French school of fortification (Pagan, Bar-le-Duc, Antoine de Ville e Manesson Mallet) were also used.

In 1732, D. João V (1707-1750) implemented a national curriculum concerning engineering training. All students, both from the Lisbon military academy and from the provincial academies should have the same kind of training.In Lisbon, the Course of Military Fortification and Architecture kept the pace with Europe. From 1686 to 1703, Manuel de Azevedo Fortes,taught mathematics at the military academy. Fortes had lived abroad until 1686, namely in Spain, at the Imperial College of Madrid and at the University of Alcalá de Henares, and in France, at the Plessis College, being welcomed enthusiastically by the Portuguese intellectual circles when he decided to return to the motherland.As a result of his position at the Course of Military Fortification and Architecture he wrote the O Engenheiro Portuguez (The Portuguese Engineer) (1728-29), a seminal work for the Portuguese engineering, where the métier of the engineer is defined in terms of its scientific foundations, clearly separating it from architecture, and fully acknowledging its social utility. The Portuguese Engineer was the keystone of a larger set of works which aimed at training Portuguese engineers accordingly to the European standards.

It is still quite common to think about the so-called “peripheral countries” as passive consumers of scientific and technological knowledge and practises produced by the so-called “centres”. However, recent studies show that there is a different story to be told, in which the concept of “transmission” is replaced by the concept of “appropriation” of knowledge, allowing the local scientific and technological elites to regain an active posture.

This research project aims at analysing the textbooks used in the Portuguese engineering courses syllabi from 1680 until the end of the 19th century within a comparative framework which Spain, and particularly Catalonia. We aim at understand the extent of the French influence and the production of a more local and original work.