Geographies of the Romantic North: Science, Antiquarianism, and Travel, 1790 –1830

This book examines British scientific and antiquarian travels in the "North," circa 1790–1830. British perceptions, representations and imaginings of the North are considered part of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century processes of British self-fashioning as a Northern nation, and key in unifying the expanding North Atlantic empire. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Introduction: “Ask Where’ the North?”....Pages 3-15 Formative Influences and the Call of the North....Pages 17-37 Front Matter....Pages 39-39 An “Aboriginal District of Britain”:* The European North, Traditional Cultures, and the Search for Common Roots....Pages 41-60 An Intercontinental North: North Britons and North Americans....Pages 61-81 “Treasures Inestimable”: Collecting and Displaying the North....Pages 83-101 Front Matter....Pages 103-103 At the Boundary of the Temperate and Frigid Zones: The North, the Sciences, and Landscape Appreciation....Pages 105-124 Worlds of Knowledge, Worlds Apart? Native and Newcomer Geographies....Pages 125-149 “Our Surprizing Qualifications,” or “Calculated to Make on the Minds of This Simple People a Great Impression”: Interpreting Displays of Romantic Science among Northern Indigenous Communities....Pages 151-182 Conclusions....Pages 183-188 Back Matter....Pages 189-265 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, unprecedented numbers of Britons travelled to the sub-Arctic, foreshadowing the fever for polar exploration that would emerge in the mid-nineteenth century. At the same time, literary and scientific developments contributed to the movement now known as Romanticism. How did the sciences, antiquarianism, and ethnology interact to produce visions of the North? And what happened when British 'men of science' and Northern indigenous peoples encountered each other's ways of knowing the world? This study presents a new approach to understanding British engagements with the North, revealing its heretofore unheralded significance for the development of British identities, the Romantic imagination, and the advancement of the sciences