DISTANCE AND DISTURBANCE: TRAVEL, EXPLORATION AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

How should information about distant places be collected? How should it be made available to the reading public? And how far could it be trusted? Such questions were posed by the expansion of exploration and travel during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to the leading scientific authorities, the making of accurate observations, the use of precise instruments, the methodical collection of specimens and the writing of narratives provided the principal means by which knowledge itself could travel. Yet the relationship between metropolitan science, travel writing and field observation remained fraught with difficulty. This essay considers a variety of ways in which the experience of disturbance shaped the culture of exploration during the nineteenth century, focusing in particular on writing, collecting and sketching.