Pax Britannica: A History of the British Empire
Jul 23, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min · 18 segments
I was kindly invited to interview the curators of Royal Observatory Greenwich to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, moving in. I got to explore the whole…
Daisy ChamberlainGuest
Samuel HumeHost
Daisy, can we start at the beginning? So it's 350 years since the Royal Zoo Arbitrary was founded.
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich was founded in 1675 by King Charles II.
And when it was founded, it was Britain's oldest purpose-built scientific institution.
And its founding purpose was really about using astronomy or data from the stars to improve navigation at sea.
And this was all taking place against a backdrop of expanding global trading routes and kind of England's desire alongside other European powers to dominate those trading routes, particularly to the West Indies and the East Indies.
So it was really hoped that the work of the observatory would contribute to improving navigation at sea, allowing faster and more frequent journeys along those trading routes and protecting valuable cargoes from shipwreck.
And so kind of collecting this positional astronomical data and creating a detailed map of the stars, because that was really the first step, was really the focus of the work of the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed.
He worked on that for at least 40 years, cataloguing almost 3,000 stars, or over 3,000 stars.
Yeah, and it's thanks to Flamsteed's wife, Margaret, that we know so much about his work as well, isn't it?
After Flamsteed passed away, Margaret worked together with Flamsteed's old assistants to publish all of the data that he'd collected in his catalogue, Historia Celestis, and then later on in A Star Atlas magazine.
And his legacy kind of really lives on today because we still know a lot of the stars by the names that Flamseed gave them.
Yeah, so in this period, so kind of 1670s, it was less about these kind of voyages of discovery or circumnavigations, because obviously, like you've said, those have already taken place in the 16th century.
It was more about making those maritime routes between east and west more efficient, making them safer and being able to dominate those routes, all kind of with an eye on profit from imperial trade.
So Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal here at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
Daisy, can we start at the beginning? So it's 350 years since the Royal Zoo Arbitrary was founded.
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich was founded in 1675 by King Charles II.
And when it was founded, it was Britain's oldest purpose-built scientific institution.
And its founding purpose was really about using astronomy or data from the stars to improve navigation at sea.
And this was all taking place against a backdrop of expanding global trading routes and kind of England's desire alongside other European powers to dominate those trading routes, particularly to the West Indies and the East Indies.
So it was really hoped that the work of the observatory would contribute to improving navigation at sea, allowing faster and more frequent journeys along those trading routes and protecting valuable cargoes from shipwreck.
And so kind of collecting this positional astronomical data and creating a detailed map of the stars, because that was really the first step, was really the focus of the work of the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed.
He worked on that for at least 40 years, cataloguing almost 3,000 stars, or over 3,000 stars.
Yeah, and it's thanks to Flamsteed's wife, Margaret, that we know so much about his work as well, isn't it?
After Flamsteed passed away, Margaret worked together with Flamsteed's old assistants to publish all of the data that he'd collected in his catalogue, Historia Celestis, and then later on in A Star Atlas magazine.
And his legacy kind of really lives on today because we still know a lot of the stars by the names that Flamseed gave them.
Yeah, so in this period, so kind of 1670s, it was less about these kind of voyages of discovery or circumnavigations, because obviously, like you've said, those have already taken place in the 16th century.
It was more about making those maritime routes between east and west more efficient, making them safer and being able to dominate those routes, all kind of with an eye on profit from imperial trade.
So Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal here at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
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