Introduction

Summary

The introduction outlines the two major arguments of the book. Firstly, the sheer laboriousness of doing science in remote locations, and the inherent dependency of naturalists and surveyors on Himalayan peoples’ expertise and labour. Secondly, the way that the imagining and remaking of the Himalaya was complicated by comparisons with the Alps and the Andes, and the recognition of the commensurability of mountain environments globally. Together, these approaches work to offer wide-ranging insights into the trajectories and consequences of emerging imperial visions of the globe in the nineteenth century. The introduction also lays out the geography, scope and scale of the Himalaya as treated in this book, and how the remaking of these overwrote existing understandings of the mountains in South Asian cosmology. This is followed by a discussion of the story of measuring mountains in relation to wider debates in historical geography, the history of science and the history of the British Empire in South Asia, as well as interdisciplinary questions about mountains, exploration and indigenous labour.