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Abstract

This introductory section is based on the idea of Britain’s cultural agency, and it aims to show that the Royal Society actively contributed to the development of learned travel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Divided into three sections, it provides historico-cultural information, drawing the reader’s attention to the Fellows’ interest in overseas countries, as well as to the role that they played in the construction of solid Anglo-Italian relations particularly from 1738 to 1800. Figures, intellectual circles and academies are here paid special attention, together with their favourite cultural foci and systems of cultural communication.

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D’Amore, M. (2017). Introduction. In: The Royal Society and the Discovery of the Two Sicilies. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55291-0_1

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