Penning Progress: The Aristocratic Lens of Maria Constança da Câmara on European Science and Technology (1826-1842)

Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation

Description

Maria Constança da Câmara (1801-1860), Marchioness of Fronteira by marriage, was one of the thousands of Portuguese supporters of the constitutional regime who was forced to leave the kingdom of Portugal after Infante Miguel took the throne and restored the absolutist regime in 1828. On the other hand, she is one of the few Portuguese women from the first half of the 19th century to have written a diary (1826-1842), predominantly a travelogue, which has only recently been published, having remained unpublished in her family archive until then. The United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Austria, the various German and Italian kingdoms, are some of the places she travelled to. This diary thus becomes an invaluable source for the story of the daily life of an aristocrat, in contact with different geographical and social realities, while maintaining her usual lifestyle, typical of a transnational aristocracy. In addition to her individual interests, especially in music and literature, she was not indifferent to the technological and scientific innovations of her time, recording them with a critical eye. We therefore want to assess this aristocrat’s sensitivities towards the science and technology that was developing in Europe at the time demonstrating how the women ego documentation and non-scientific authorship can also be an important source for the history of these themes.
Period7 Sept 2024
Event titleEuropean Society for the History of Science: Science, Technology, Humanity and the Earth
Event typeConference
Conference number11
LocationBarcelona, SpainShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Marquesa de Fronteira
  • Diário
  • Diary
  • Diarística
  • travelogue
  • Travel literature
  • Travel manuscripts
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Gender
  • Gender Studies
  • Science
  • Technological literacy
  • Botânica
  • Botany
  • Arqueologia
  • Archeology
  • Engenharia
  • engineering
  • Construção Civil
  • Construção Naval
  • Women
  • Women History
  • Women Writers
  • Printing
  • Media
  • Periodical press
  • Transportation Engineering

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