................................
THE TEAM
CONTACT
However, the third, with the correspondence, and the fourth with the collection of several studies, are the sole responsibility of Luís Albuquerque. The book, of excellent editorial quality, was sponsored by the newly founded Academia Internacional da Cultura Portuguesa [International Academy of Portuguese Culture].
Meanwhile Michel Mollat du Jourdin had been organising the Colloques Internationaux d'Histoire Maritime since the mid-1950s. It was a known fact that the Colloques did not cover the technical aspects of navigation: the colloquium held in Lisbon in 1960, within the scope of the Prince Henry the Navigator celebrations, was an exception in which technical themes were dominant, revealing the influence of Portuguese historiography through the attention given to this branch of navigation. But from the point of view of the scientific programme, these congresses continued to focus essentially on ports, maritime trade, and other chapters related to maritime economic history, a dominant trend internationally to date, as evidenced by the fact that this Committee was replaced de facto in the 1990s by the International Maritime Economic History Association.
Nevertheless, cartography and nautical science continued to attract the attention of the Agrupamento de Cartografia Antiga, but were not a central theme in contemporary historiography since they lacked their own space of affirmation: this is what led Luís de Albuquerque to promote the Reunião Internacional de História da Náutica [International Meeting on the History of Nautical Science] in 1968.
Naturally, Armando Cortesão was given precedence due to his age and position as head of the Coimbra branch, but in his inaugural speech, he gave all the credit to his younger colleague: "I must say, however, in all fairness, that although the convenience and possibility of staging this meeting has arisen in my many conversations with Professor Luís de Albuquerque on these matters, the original idea came from him, far more than from me. In fact, some of the good that has perhaps been done in this branch is largely due to the astonishing intellectual activity of this exceptional man" (Rev. da Universidade de Coimbra [Journal of the University of Coimbra], xxiv, p.4).
The Actas [Proceedings] were edited in a volume of the Revista da Universidade de Coimbra and included collaborations by leading names among the scholars dedicated to the history of the art of navigation at that time: among others, Guy Beaujouan, Emmanuel Poule, Ursula Lamb, Francis Maddison, Ernst Crone, Marcel Destombes, Wilcomb Washburn, G. R. Tibbetts, David Waters, R. A. Skelton, Max Justo Guedes, Reyer Hooykaas, and Rolando Laguarda Trías.
