British Exploration in the Nineteenth Century: A Historiographical Survey

Abstract

This article examines the historiography on nineteenth-century British exploration, tracing major themes in the scholarship on the subject. It credits the work of Edward Said, Mary Louise Pratt, and Paul Carter as the main inspiration for the resurgence of academic interest in the history and literature of travel and exploration, though it also indicates that there are important limitations to the approach they pioneered. The article then traces two key themes of recent work on exploration. The first theme concerns the institutional, social, and intellectual forces in Britain that inspired the exploration of other lands and oversaw its operations. The second theme concerns the cultural encounter between explorers and indigenous peoples, which ranged in its effects from the psychic to the political realm.