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Calculating Similitude and Difference: John Seller and the 'Placing' of English Subjects in the Global Community of Nations

Steinberg, Philip E.

Authors



Abstract

This article examines uses of calculation in the works of John Seller, a seventeenth-century publisher of sea atlases, navigation manuals and popular geography texts. It is argued that Seller led his readers to calculate overseas places as distant but accessible and to calculate overseas peoples as different but similar. Foreign places thus were constructed as knowable, opening up a world wherein the English could engage in commerce and, in some instances, territorial domination. By inviting his readers to constitute projections of similitude and difference across time and space, Seller enabled them to use calculation to construct themselves as English subjects who knew their ‘place’, within the English nation and within the global community of nations.

Citation

Steinberg, P. E. (2006). Calculating Similitude and Difference: John Seller and the 'Placing' of English Subjects in the Global Community of Nations. Social and Cultural Geography, 7(5), 687-707. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360600971242

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date 2006
Deposit Date Sep 6, 2013
Journal Social and Cultural Geography
Print ISSN 1464-9365
Electronic ISSN 1470-1197
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Volume 7
Issue 5
Pages 687-707
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360600971242
Keywords calculation, navigation, John Seller, England, cartography
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1450827