Reinterpreting Exploration

Exploration was a central and perhaps defining aspect of the West's encounters with other peoples and lands. Rather than reproduce celebratory narratives of individual heroism and national glory, this volume focuses on exploration's instrumental role in shaping a European sense of exceptionalism and its iconic importance in defining the terms of cultural engagement with other peoples. In chapters offering broad geographic range, the contributors address many of the key themes of recent research on exploration, including exploration's contribution to European imperial expansion, Western scientific knowledge, Enlightenment ideas and practices, and metropolitan print culture. They reassess indigenous peoples' responses upon first contacts with European explorers, their involvement as intermediaries in the operations of expeditions, and the complications that their prior knowledge posed for European claims of discovery. Underscoring that exploration must be seen as a process of mediation between representation and reality, this book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to the ongoing reinterpretation of exploration's role in the making of the modern world.

The Nile Expedition of 1860–1863 was one of the most important exploratory expeditions made in the nineteenth century. The long-debated question of the location of the source of the Nile was answered (despite continuing arguments) and the venture had important historical consequences. Earlier accounts of the expedition have assumed James Augustus Grant to have been no more than the loyal second-in-command to John Hanning Speke, the leader. This new edition of Grant’s 1864 book, A Walk across Africa, provides the opportunity to re-examine his role. The original text has been fully annotated with explanatory notes and also supplemented by extracts from the very remarkable detailed day-to-day journal which Grant kept. Even more unusually, this edition includes reproductions of the whole visual record which he made consisting of 147 watercolours and sketches. This was the first ever visual record of large parts of East Africa and the Upper Nile Valley region. These documentary and illustrative materials have been drawn from the extensive collection of Grant’s papers now in the care of the National Library of Scotland. The Library has co-operated in the preparation of this volume to make possible its special features. Grant emerges as a much more impressive and important figure than has previously been recognised. He was a trained scientist and his narrative is a well-organised perspective on the expedition and its activities. His own growing understanding of Africa and of Africans becomes apparent and helps to explain his later activities. The editor provides a context to the expedition and its results and this includes a new approach to the understanding of the Nile source problem by exposing the credulity of the way many previous commentators have used Ptolemy’s information and also by suggesting that the problem should be approached in the light of geological and geomorphological as well as historical information. The Introduction in addition discusses Grant’s work in the light of the development of the academic understanding of the history of Africa and of European involvement in the region.

As globalization has deepened in recent years, historians have begun to see that many of the global challenges we face today first drew serious attention in the 1960s. This book examines how the Johnson presidency responded to these problems and draws out the lessons for today.

This volume brings together twenty-two authors from various countries who analyze travelogues on the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The travelogues reflect the colorful diversity of the genre, presenting the experiences of individuals and groups from China to Great Britain. The spotlight falls on interdependencies of travel writing and historiography, geographic spaces, and specific practices such as pilgrimages, the hajj, and the harem. Other points of emphasis include the importance of nationalism, the place and time of printing, representations of fashion, and concepts of masculinity and femininity. By displaying close, comparative, and distant readings, the volume offers new insights into perceptions of "otherness", the circulation of knowledge, intermedial relations, gender roles, and digital analysis.

One of the greatest stories of world exploration ever told. By the late eighteenth century, the river Niger was a 2,000-year-old two-part geographical problem. Solving it would advance European knowledge of Africa, provide a route to commercial opportunity and help eradicate the evil of slavery. Mungo Park achieved lasting fame in 1796 by solving the first part of the Niger problem – which way did the river run? Park died in 1806, in circumstances which are still uncertain, in failing to solve the second – where did the Niger end? Numerous expeditions explored the river in the decades following Park's death, but not until 1830 was its final course revealed following in-the-field exploration. By then, however, the Niger problem had been solved by 'armchair geographers' who had never even visited Africa. Majestic River celebrates Mungo Park's achievements and illuminates his rich afterlife – how and why he was commemorated long after his death. It is also the thrilling story of the many expeditions that sought to determine the Niger's course and the facts of Park's disappearance, as well as a biography of the Niger itself as the river slowly took shape in the European imagination.

The Unseen Leader delivers one simple but immensely powerful point: we need to radically rethink how we discuss leadership. In this book, American historian Martin Gutmann passionately challenges the received wisdom that history's great leaders were individuals with a proclivity for action and brash words. Drawing on extensive historical scholarship and contemporary leadership theory, Gutmann delves into the journeys of four unknown or misunderstood leaders who achieved remarkable successes in vastly different environments—the Polar North, the deserts of Arabia, the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, and Second World War London. What emerges is an entirely new narrative on leadership. Contrary to the perception of heroic protagonists forging ahead boldly, history's truly great leaders were often precisely those who didn't need to generate excessive noise or activity. Instead, they skillfully minimized dramatic circumstances. Their stories challenge our present-day conception of leadership and can inspire the leaders of tomorrow.

A path-breaking exploration of how space, place, and scale influenced the production and circulation of scientific knowledge in the nineteenth century. Over the past twenty years, scholars have increasingly questioned not just historical presumptions about the putative rise of modern science during the long nineteenth century but also the geographical contexts for and variability of science during the era. In Geographies of Knowledge, an internationally distinguished array of historians and geographers examine the spatialization of science in the period, tracing the ways in which scale and space are crucial to understanding the production, dissemination, and reception of scientific knowledge in the nineteenth century. Engaging with and extending the influential work of David Livingstone and others on science's spatial dimensions, the book touches on themes of empire, gender, religion, Darwinism, and much more. In exploring the practice of science across four continents, these essays illuminate the importance of geographical perspectives to the study of science and knowledge, and how these ideas made and contested locally could travel the globe. Dealing with everything from the local spaces of the Surrey countryside to the global negotiations that proposed a single prime meridian, from imperial knowledge creation and exploration in Burma, India, and Africa to studies of metropolitan scientific-cum-theological tussles in Belfast and in Confederate America, Geographies of Knowledge outlines an interdisciplinary agenda for the study of science as geographically situated sets of practices in the era of its modern disciplinary construction. More than that, it outlines new possibilities for all those interested in knowledge's spatial characteristics in other periods. Contributors: John A. Agnew, Vinita Damodaran, Diarmid A. Finnegan, Nuala C. Johnson, Dane Kennedy, Robert J. Mayhew, Mark Noll, Ronald L. Numbers, Nicolaas Rupke, Yvonne Sherratt, Charles W. J. Withers

This book appraises the critical contribution of the Studies in Imperialism series to the writing of imperial histories as the series passes its 100th publication. The volume brings together some of the most distinguished scholars writing today to explore the major intellectual trends in Imperial history, with a particular focus on the cultural readings of empire that have flourished over the last generation. When the Studies in Imperialism series was founded, the discipline of Imperial history was at what was probably its lowest ebb. A quarter of a century on, there has been a tremendous broadening of the scope of what the study of empire encompasses. Essays in the volume consider ways in which the series and the wider historiography have sought to reconnect British and imperial histories; to lay bare the cultural expressions and registers of colonial power; and to explore the variety of experiences the home population derived from the empire.

The first volume of Viaggiatori “Curatele” series seeks to recreate some scientific dialogues, namely meetings, exchanges and acquisition of theoretical and practical scientific knowledge, thus linking the cultural, historical and geographical context of America, Asia, Europe and Mediterranean Sea between the 16th and the 20th century. More specifically, the main objective is to consider the role of travellers as passeurs, as “intermediaries” for building and allowing the circulation of knowhow and the practical and theoretical knowledge from one continent to another.

While challenging traditional postcolonial accounts, Gabay places racial anxiety at the heart of imaginaries of Africa and international order.