Abstract
In July 1925, Robert Falcon Scott’s famous ship Discovery sailed south, heralding a bright new age in British engagement with the Antarctic. Colonial Secretary Leo Amery—who had already dreamed of placing the entire Antarctic region under British control1—told a civic luncheon that the vessel was engaged in an act of development similar to that of opening up Africa (where Britain was spending millions of pounds on infrastructure that would facilitate economic growth),2 taking on “the duty of developing and safeguarding the vast natural resources of that ocean region.”3 When The Times described the Discovery’s mission as “purely scientific research work” the implicit comparison was not commerce, but the pole-directed quests of prewar years.4 Whitehall agreed. A month earlier, the Heroic Age veteran Louis Bernacchi had asked the state to fund a new expedition to the Antarctic continent for its value to patriotism and the spirit of discovery, prompting the Treasury to summarily declare that it had “no money to spare for these absurd schemes.”5 Experts were in; explorers were out.
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Notes
On Amery and the formulation of this policy, see Peter Beck, “Securing the dominant ’place in the wan Antarctic sun’ for the British Empire: the policy of extending British control over Antarctica,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 29 (3), 1983: 448–461.
See for instance Stephen Constantine, The making of British colonial development policy 1914–1940 (London: Frank Cass, 1984), 119–58.
Adrian Howkins, “Frozen empires: a history of the Antarctic sovereignty dispute between Britain Argentina, and Chile, 1939–1959.” PhD diss. (University of Texas at Austin, 2008).
In thinking about this concept I have also drawn strongly upon Peder Anker, Imperial ecology: environmental order in the British Empire, 1895–1945, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Rowland Darnley, “A new Antarctic expedition,” The Nineteenth Century and After 93 (May 1923): 722.
Rosalind Marsden, “Discovery Committee work in the Southern Ocean (1925–39) Scientific? Economic? Political?” in Ocean sciences bridging the millennia: a spectrum of historical accounts (Paris: UNESCO, 2004), 65–78.
See also John Coleman-Cooke, Discovery II in the Antarctic: the story of British research in the southern seas (Long Acre, London: Odhams, 1963). There are good reasons to admire the scientific results of the Investigations even though their overall impact on whaling regulation has probably been overstated.
Uma Kalpagam, “Colonial governmentality and the ‘economy,’” Economics and Society 29 (2000): 418–438.
See for instance Jeff Schauer, “Unrepentant butchers? Ugandan elephant control, Northern Rhodesian faunal surveys and the invention of wildlife policy,” Twentieth Century British History, forthcoming; Edward I. Steinhart, Black poachers, white hunters: a social history of hunting in colonial Kenya (Oxford: James Currey, 2006).
In the context of British government, a Blue Book is an “official report, statistical or other publication” similar to a White Paper (the classification is made by length rather than by content). Paul Boswell rev. Charles Bean, Guide to British government publications in the Library of Congress (Washington, DC: Serial and Government Publications Division, Library of Congress, 1995), 3.
John E. Kendle, The Round Table Movement and imperial union (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975).
Satia, “Developing Iraq: Britain, India and the redemption of empire and technology in the First World War,” Past and Present 197 (November 2007): 211–55.
Matej Karol Schwitzer, Margarine and other food fats: their history, production and use (London: Leonard Hill Ltd, 1958), 65; Gordon Jackson, The British whaling trade, 178–86.
Harmer, “Memorandum on the present position of the southern whaling industry,” May 29, 1918. NHM DF 1004/CP/749/3, 57.
Eric L. Mills, Biological oceanography: an early history, 1870–1960 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 208–09.
On animals and the ethos of imperial improvement, see for instance John M. MacKenzie, Empires of nature and the nature of empires: imperialism, Scotland, and the environment (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1997), especially 36–42; and MacKenzie, The empire of nature, 207–09.
Anthony Kirk-Greene, “Public administration and the colonial administrator,” Public Administration and Development 19 (1999): 509.
Levere, Science and the Canadian Arctic: a century of exploration, 1818–1918 (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 1993), 1–2.
See most notably Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The friendly Arctic: the story of five years in the polar regions (Macmillan: New York, 1921); The northward course of empire (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922).
Griffith Taylor to Isaiah Bowman, 23 June 1924. NLA Taylor Papers MS 1003/9/742, box 18. On Taylor’s life and career, see Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford, Griffith Taylor: visionary, environmentalist, explorer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). My thanks to Carolyn and Alison for directing me to Taylor’s papers.
On Hjort’s post-1921 interest in whaling, see Schwach, Havet, fisken, og vitenskapen: fra fiskeriundersøkelser til havforskningsinstitutt, 1860–2000 (Bergen: Havforskningsinstituttet, 2000), 137.
Hjort held the grudge deeply: as late as 1932, he described the fishermen’s belief as “reminiscent of medieval superstitions,” though he felt that matters had since improved. Hjort, “A brief history of whaling,” Polar Record 2 (1932): 28.
Hardy recounted his experiences on this voyage in “Johan Hjort, 1869–1948,” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 7 (November 1950): 167–81. The process of developing an effective method of whale-marking involved a series of comically ill-fated trials, including a large crossbow-inspired device instead of a harpoon gun.
Neil Mackintosh, John Wheeler, and A. F. Clowes, “Southern blue and fin whales,” Discovery Reports 1, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1929), especially 463–66.
Alister Hardy, Great waters: a voyage of natural history to study whales, plankton, and the waters of the Southern Ocean in the old Royal Research Ship “Discovery,” with the results brought up to date by the findings of the R.R.S. “Discovery II,” (London: Collins, 1967), 339. Emphasis in original.
For a fine account of the political relationship between Britain and Norway during the 1920s, see Odd-Bjørn Fure, Norsk utenrikspolitikkshistorie 3: mellomkrigstid 1920–1940 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1996).
This episode is discussed at length in Johan N. Tønnessen, Den moderne hvalfangsts historie: opprinnelse og utvikling (3), Sandefjord: Norges Hvalfangstforbund, 1969, 314–38.
Commander Lamotte to Commanding Officer, Discovery, April 11, 1928. SPRI MS 1284/4/9, 869. On Hodson’s travel within the Dependencies, see Robert Headland, The island of South Georgia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 87.
See for instance D. J. Morgan, The official history of colonial development volume 1: the origins of British aid policy, 1924–1945 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980), 35–38.
Hodson’s early career as a police officer and tax collector in Africa, heavy on rugged adventure and summary power over indigenous people and animals alike, quite possibly cultivated a more visceral disdain for the Discovery Committee’s metropolitan authority. See for instance Arnold Hodson, Trekking the Great Thirst: travel and sport in the Kalahari Desert (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1912).
The Falklands was not a unique case. As Bernard Porter has observed in the case of nineteenth-century New Zealand, governors of remote British colonial possessions could prove to be “aggravatingly independent” as distance made the central authority of Whitehall fainter and the influence of local pressures correspondingly greater. Bernard Porter, The lion’s share: a short history of British imperialism 1850–1955, (3rd edition) (London: Longman, 1996), 52.
Heather Hoag, Damming the empire: British attitudes on hydropower development in Africa, 1917–1960 (Boston: Program for the Study of the African Environment Research Series, Boston University, 2008), 4.
On development of the far northern regions in these three states, see respectively Sverker Sörlin, Framtidslandet: debatten om Norrland och naturresurserna under det industriella genombröttet (Stockholm: Carlssons), 1988.
Liza Piper, The industrial transformation of subarctic Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009).
Morris Zaslow, The northward expansion of Canada 1914–1967 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988).
Pier Horensma, The Soviet Arctic (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).
On the concept of the “geo-body,” see Thongchai Winichakul, Siam mapped: the history of the geobody of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
The full report of the Committee on British Policy in the Antarctic at the Imperial Conference is reproduced in William M. Bush, ed., Antarctica and international law: a collection of inter-state and national documents (2) (London and New York: Oceana Publications, 1982), 100–04.
This was an early formulation of the discourse that Charlotte Epstein has unpacked in The power of words in international relations: birth of an antiwhaling discourse (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).
Bjarne Aagaard, The Norvegia-expeditions and Bouvet Island (Oslo: Norges Handelsog Sjøfartstidendes Trykkeri, 1928).
The full trail of British documents on this matter is held in SAB 136.GG 1342–37–1170. See also Odd Gunnar Skagestad, Norsk polarpolitikk: hovedtrekk og utviklingslinjer 1905–1974 (Oslo: Dreyer, 1975), 47.
B. J. Greenhill, “Memorandum on the origins, composition and terms of reference of the Polar Committee,” attached to unsigned note from Commonwealth Relations Office to Foreign Office, March 29, 1957. TNA DO 35/7144.
For a brief history of the sector principle, see Donat Pharand, Canada’s Arctic waters in international law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1–11.
See Mawson’s frequently aggressive correspondence with both the Australian National Research Council and (to a lesser extent) with the Australian government during the 1920s, MAC 34 BZE. See also Philip Ayres, Mawson: a life (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 150–60. On the role of Antarctic exploration as a vehicle for advancing the profile of science in Australia, in which Mawson played a key role, see Peder Roberts, “Fighting the microbe of ‘sporting mania’: Australian science and Antarctic exploration in the early twentieth century,” Endeavor 28, 2004, 109–13.
On the role of Antarctic exploration as a vehicle for advancing the profile of science in Australia, in which Mawson played a key role, see Peder Roberts, “Fighting the microbe of ‘sporting mania’: Australian science and Antarctic exploration in the early twentieth century,” Endeavor 28, 2004, 109–13.
See in particular Mawson to Casey, June 21, 1928 and July 5, 1928; “New expedition to Antarctic,” The Times, February 15, 1929; “Mawson expedition to Antarctic,” The Times, February 22, 1929. MAC 33 BZE. Although New Zealand was included in the expedition’s title, it contributed only £2,500 of the total cost of £60,000. Lester Bowden Quartermain, New Zealand and the Antarctic (Wellington: A. R. Shearer, Government Printer, 1971), 47.
Mawson, “The frozen continent,” The Times, October 12, 1929.
Rosalind Marsden, “Investigations of the Humboldt Current following a long series of misadventures: The voyage of the William Scoresby, 1931,” in Keith R. Benson and Philip F. Rehbock, eds, Oceanographic history: the Pacific and beyond (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 186–95.
Wilkins was a key figure in interwar polar exploration. Milking patrons on both sides of the Atlantic, Wilkins is probably best considered as part of the American scene, along with figures such as Richard Byrd and Lincoln Ellsworth. While Simon Nasht’s biography of Wilkins makes some valuable points, I entirely reject his claim that Wilkins was the “first truly modern polar explorer … who finally reversed the heroic equation of glory before knowledge.” Simon Nasht, The last explorer: Hubert Wilkins, hero of the great age of polar exploration, (New York: Arcade, 2006), xiv.
Colonial Office, An economic survey of the Colonial Empire (1933) (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1935), 420.
J. A. Cross, Lord Swinton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 111–17.
Major James Milner, statement to the House of Commons during Supply debate, Hansard, House of Commons debates, July 12, 1934, vol. 292 col. 606; Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the expert: agrarian doctrines of development and the legacies of British colonialism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), 105.
John Rymill, Southern lights: the official account of the British Graham Land Expedition, 1934–37 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1938).
For more on Tabarin, see Howkins, “Frozen empires,” and Vivian E. Fuchs, Of ice and men: the story of the British Antarctic Survey, 1943–73 (Oswestry: A. Nelson, 1982). The decision to undertake occupation with the aim of strengthening legal title was taken at Cabinet level.
Carruthers to Edgell, January 17, 1944 NOL Deacon papers M3/2 (1–9). The relationship between biological and physical oceanography is also addressed in Helen M. Rozwadowski, The sea knows no boundaries: a century of marine science under ICES (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 111–45.
See for instance H. Charnock, “George Edward Raven Deacon. 21 March 1906–16 November 1984,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 31, 1985: 112–42.
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© 2011 Peder Roberts
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Roberts, P. (2011). Imperial Science in the Antarctic. In: The European Antarctic. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337909_3
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