Abstract
In early March 1912—almost at the exact same time Roald Amundsen broke the news of his South Pole triumph—the British Colonial Office’s whaling expert, Rowland Darnley, received a proposal that struck him as “an extraordinary combination of science and commerce.”1 Two Swedish scientists, Otto Nordenskjöld and Johan Gunnar Andersson, had asked for a license to start a new whaling company in the British-controlled Falkland Islands Dependencies. The company would be explicitly charged with funding whaling investigation and with supporting a long-term scientific station on the Antarctic continent, harvesting whales to fund research into the whales and their environment. Worried that there was “no guarantee that the scientists are not in league with the financiers” and that the license was too valuable a commodity to part with for uncertain benefit, Darnley advised his superiors to reject the plan.2
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Notes
Works that do mention the expedition include Urban Wråkberg, “Where science turns into sports and politics: the decline of Swedish polar research in the early 20th century;” in Svante Lindquist, ed., Center on the periphery: historical aspects of 20th-century Swedish physics (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1993), 79–106.
Lisbeth Lewander, “The representations of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition,” Polar Record 38 (2002): 97–114.
G. E. Fogg, A History of Antarctic science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Ann Savours, The voyages of the Discovery (London: Virgin, 1992).
William James Mills, “Heroic era of Antarctic exploration,” in Mills, Expanding polar frontiers: a historical encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 299, gives a concise summary of the term’s history.
The original reference is J. Gordon Hayes, The conquest of the South Pole: Antarctic exploration 1906–1931 (London: Butterworth, 1932).
Francis Spufford, I may be some time: ice and the English imagination (New York: St Martin’s, 1997).
Felix Driver, Geography militant: cultures of exploration and empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), especially 24–48.
Max Jones, “The Royal Geographical Society and the commemoration of Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2000).
On Beaufort, see Nicholas Courtney, Gale force ten: the life and legacy of Admiral Francis Beaufort (London: Headline, 2002).
On Barrow, see Fergus Fleming, Barrow’s boys: a stirring story of death, fortitude, and outright lunacy (New York: Grove, 2001).
See for instance Susan Schlee, The edge of an unfamiliar world: a history of oceanography (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973).
See in particular Lisbeth Koerner, Linnaeus, nature and nation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
On the development of northern Sweden in this period, see Sverker Sörlin, Framtidslandet: debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombröttet (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1988).
L. H. Herzberg, “The Norwegian Geographical Society 1889–1989,” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift 42 (1989): 195–99.
Robert Marc Friedman, “Civilization and national honour: the rise of Norwegian geophysical and cosmic science,” in John Peter Collett, ed., Making sense of space: the history of Norwegian space activities (Oslo/Stockholm/Copenhagen/Bonn: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 3–39.
The motion was proposed by Karl von Steinen and passed unanimously. John Scott Keltie and Hugh Robert Mill eds., Report of the Sixth International Geographical Congress (London: John Murray, 1896), 176.
On Nordenskjöld’s previous travels, see Torgny Nordin, “Beyond borders: Otto Nordenskjöld’s many missions,” in Elzinga et al., eds, Antarctic challenges: historical and current perspectives on Otto Nordenskjöld’s Antarctic expedition 1901–1903: Acta regiae societatis scientiarum et litterarum gothenburgensis interdisciplinaria 5 (Gothenburg: Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, 2004), 66–71.
See for instance Anne Buttimer and Tom Mels, By northern lights: stories on the making of geography in Sweden (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 33.
See for instance Tore Frängsmyr, Upptäckten av istiden: studier i den moderna geologins framväxt (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1976).
Urban Wråkberg has argued that in the context of a “logistical crisis” affecting polar travel before icebreakers and heavier-than-air transport, Andrée’s expedition was not as obviously foolhardy as it appears to modern eyes. Wråkberg, “Andrée’s folly: time for reappraisal?” in Wråkberg ed., The centennial of S. A. Andrée’s North Pole expedition: proceedings of a conference on S. A. Andrée and the agenda for social science research of the polar regions (Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1999), 56–99.
A. G. E. Jones, “New light on John Balleny,” Geographical Journal 135 (1969): 60.
Timothy H. Baughman, Before the heroes came: Antarctica in the 1890s (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 26–27.
Carl Anton Larsen, “The voyage of the ’Jason’ to the Antarctic regions,” Geographical Journal 4 (1894): 337.
Robert K. Headland, The island of South Georgia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 110.
Tønnessen, Den moderne hvalfangsts historie: opprinnelse og utvikling (2) (Sandefjord: Norges Hvalfangstforbund, 1967), 279. On the history of this company, see Ian B. Hart, Pesca: the history of Compañia Argentina de Pesca Sociedad Anónima of Buenos Aires: an account of the pioneer modern whaling and sealing company in the Antarctic (Salcombe: Aidan Ellis, 2001).
Odd Gunnar Skagestad, Norsk polarpolitikk: hovedtrekk og utviklingslinjer 1905–1974 (Oslo: Dreyer, 1975), 42.
Nordenskjöld, “Om resultaten af senaste årtiondets sydpolsforskning,” Ymer 31 (1911): 124.
On Keltie’s role in British Antarctic exploration, see in particular Roland Huntford, Scott and Amundsen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979).
Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the expert: agrarian doctrines of development and the legacies of British colonialism (Athens,: Ohio University Press, 2007), 54–89.
W. T. Calman, “Sidney Frederic Harmer. 1862–1950,” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 7 (1951): 359–71.
On Newton, see for instance Alexander Frederick Richard Wollaston, Life of Alfred Newton (New York: E. Dutton, 1921).
John M. MacKenzie, The empire of nature: hunting, conservation and British imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 206–11.
A summary of this legislation is provided in International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Legal measures for the conservation of marine mammals (Gland, Switzerland: International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1982), 112.
Allardyce is widely regarded as a “green” hero in the English-language literature for his early enthusiasm for regulation—see for instance Henry R. Heyburn, “Profile: William Lamond Allardyce, 1861–1930: pioneer Antarctic conservationist,” Polar Record 20 (1980): 39–42.
Erling Næss, Autobiography of a shipping man (Colchester: Seatrade Publications, 1997), 37.
Ronald Hyam notes that Darnley graduated as sixth “wrangler” from Cambridge in 1897, and also that his transition to Colonial Office bureaucracy was sufficiently slow for the Earl of Elgin—Colonial Secretary from 1905–1908—to unsuccessfully attempt to bribe Darnley into resigning as one of Elgin’s personal secretaries. Hyam, “The Colonial Office mind 1900–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8 (October 1979): 37.
See for instance Cosmo Parkinson, The Colonial Office from within 1909–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 1947), 48–49.
George Dangerfield, The strange death of liberal England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). Emphasizing the importance of nation rather than state to Scott’s memory, Max Jones has demonstrated that the intense outburst of public sympathy for the victims of Scott’s final expedition prompted the government to commemorate the dead, and not vice versa. Jones, Last great quest, especially 104–106. My thanks to Peter Stansky for passing on the astute comparison of public grief for Scott and for the “people’s princess.”
On the anxieties of this period and its wider cultural manifestations, see for instance H. Arnold Barton, “The silver age of Swedish national romanticism, 1905–1920,” in Barton, Essays on Scandinavian history (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 242–55.
Quoted in Stephen Constantine, The making of British colonial development policy 1914–1940 (London: Frank Cass, 1984), 17.
Ronald Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office 1905–1908: the watershed of the Empire-Commonwealth (New York: St Martin’s, 1968), 469.
W. J. Hall, “Sir Guy Marshall, K.C.M.G., F.R.S.,” Nature 183 (May 16, 1959): 1384.
On animals and the ethos of imperial improvement, see for instance MacKenzie, Empires of nature and the nature of empires: imperialism, Scotland, and the environment (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1997), especially 36–42; and Empire of nature, 207–09.
See for instance William T. Stearn, Natural History Museum at South Kensington: a history of the British Museum (Natural History) 1753–1980 (London: Heinemann, 1980), 105–06. The bill gained considerable media attention, but did not become law until 1922.
See for instance Michael Edelstein, “Imperialism: cost and benefit,” in Roderick Floud and Deirdre N. McCloskey, eds, The economic history of Britain since 1700 (2) (second edition) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 210.
Arthur E. Shipley, “Whaling in the south,” Country Life 35 (February 21, 1914): 278–79.
Dennis Lillie, “The protection of whales,” Country Life 35 (February 21, 1914): 286.
Burn Murdoch, “Whales and polar bears,” Country Life 35 (March 14, 1914): 393. Copies of these articles are also held in NHM DF 1004/749/2.
This dispute has been discussed at length by numerous authors. See for instance Timothy H. Baughman, Pilgrims on the ice: Robert Falcon Scott’s first Antarctic expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Louis Palander, “Plan för en svensk-engelsk sydpolarexpedition. 1. Förberedande organisationsarbete för expeditionen,” Ymer 17 (1914): 17.
Nordenskjöld, “Plan för en svensk-engelsk sydpolarexpedition 2: Expeditionens vetenskapliga program,” Ymer 17 (1914): 25; 31.
See for instance Sverker Sörlin, “Rituals and resources: the North and the Arctic in Swedish scientific nationalism,” in Michael Bravo and Sörlin, eds. Narrating the Arctic: a cultural history of Nordic scientific practices (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2003), 108.
See for instance Byron Nordstrom, The history of Sweden (London: Greenwood, 2002), 71.
On the F-boat question and Swedish naval strategy, see Anders Berge, Sakkunskap och politisk rationalitet: den svenska flottan och pansarfartygsfrågan 1918–1939 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1987), 28–73.
See for instance Gunnar Åselius, The “Russian menace” to Sweden: the belief system of a small power security elite in the age of imperialism (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1994), 256.
Vera Schwach, “An eye into the sea: the early development of fisheries acoustics in Norway 1935–1960,” in Helen M. Rozwadowski, and David K. Van Keuren, eds, The machine in Neptune’s garden: historical perspectives on technology and the marine environment (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 2004), 216.
On Hjort and fisheries management in Norway more generally, see Schwach, Havet, fisken, og vitenskapen: fra fiskeriundersøkelser til havfor- skningsinstitutt, 1860–2000 (Bergen: Havforskningsinstituttet, 2000). My thanks to Havforskningsinstituttet for providing a complimentary copy of this book, which remains hard to find outside Norway.
Roald Berg, Norsk utenrikspolitikkhistorie 2: Norge på egen hånd (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995).
Patrick Salmon has also noted the role of economic necessity in pushing Norway to lean in the direction of the Entente; see for instance Salmon, Scandinavia and the great powers 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 130.
Patrick Salmon, “’Between the sea power and the land power:’ Scandinavia and the coming of the first world war,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (6th series) 3 (1993), 35.
David Henry Burton, Cecil Spring Rice: A diplomat’s life (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press), 1990, 145.
See for instance Bernard Porter, The lion’s share: a short history of British imperialism 1850–1955 (3rd edition) (London: Longman, 1996), 242–43; Constantine, Colonial development policy, 32.
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© 2011 Peder Roberts
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Roberts, P. (2011). Science, Commerce, and the State. In: The European Antarctic. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337909_2
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