
Reinterpreting Exploration
The West in the World
Dane Kennedy(Editor)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 30. January 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-19-975533-2 (ISBN)
Description
Exploration was a central and perhaps defining aspect of the West's encounters with other peoples and lands. Rather than reproduce celebratory narratives of individual heroism and national glory, this volume focuses on exploration's instrumental role in shaping a European sense of exceptionalism and its iconic importance in defining the terms of cultural engagement with other peoples. In chapters offering broad geographic range, the contributors address many of the key themes of recent research on exploration, including exploration's contribution to European imperial expansion, Western scientific knowledge, Enlightenment ideas and practices, and metropolitan print culture. They reassess indigenous peoples' responses upon first contacts with European explorers, their involvement as intermediaries in the operations of expeditions, and the complications that their prior knowledge posed for European claims of discovery. Underscoring that exploration must be seen as a process of mediation between representation and reality, this book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to the ongoing reinterpretation of exploration's role in the making of the modern world.
Reviews / Votes
This important book critically re-evaluates what Western exploration was and did - its intellectual contours and its enduring consequences -and wonderfully illuminates exploration's multiple histories, diverse geographies, and material forms. Regional essays on Russia, the Pacific, Eastern Africa, Central Asia, and Antarctica are paralleled by thematic attention to exploration and science, commerce, Enlightenment, print culture, and empire. Elegantly replacing unwarranted hagiography with critical historiography, national narratives with cross-cultural perspectives, the essays in Reinterpreting Exploration at once demythologize and reinvigorate debates on the West's role in the world and the world's impact upon the West. * Charles W.J. Withers, University of Edinburgh * Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the World...marks an important moment in an ongoing reassessment of the European project of exploration. Looking simultaneously backwards and forwards - tracing the development of current research avenues and gesturing towards new lines of enquiry? - the book investigates the 'epistemological foundations' and 'ideological agendas' of expeditionary culture and the resulting encounters with non-European peoples and places around the globe. Since popular literature persists in writing the history of exploration as the story of heroic and individualistic pioneers, this book provides a much-needed antidote.... Kennedy's collection has commendable chronological length, regional breadth, and thematic depth. * Justin D. Livingstone, Journal of Historical Geography *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
438 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-975533-2 (9780199755332)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
01/2014
Oxford University Press Inc
€210.40
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
12/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€18.99
Available for download

E-Book
12/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€15.49
Available for download
Person
Dane Kennedy is the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia.
Editor
Professor of History and International AffairsProfessor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University
Content
Contents ; Contributors ; Introduction Reinterpreting Exploration ; Dane Kennedy ; Part One Themes ; Chapter 1 Science and Exploration ; Michael F. Robinson ; Chapter 2 A Half Century of Shifting Narrative Perspectives on Encounters ; Harry Liebersohn ; Chapter 3 Exploration and Enlightenment ; Philip J. Stern ; Chapter 4 Exploration in Print: From the Miscellany to the Newspaper ; Clare Pettitt ; Chapter 5 The Making of British and French Legends of Exploration ; Berny Sebe ; Part Two Territories ; Chapter 6 Exploration in Imperial Russia ; Willard Sunderland ; Chapter 7 Exploring the Pacific World ; Jane Samson ; Chapter 8 Decentering Exploration in East Africa ; Stephen J. Rockel ; Chapter 9 The Exploration of Central Asia ; Gordon Stewart ; Chapter 10 The Historiography of Antarctic Exploration ; Stephanie Barczewski