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Tropical Views and Visions: Images of the Tropical World, National Maritime Museum, 12–13 July 2002
CONFERENCE REPORTS
275
of architecture, the environment and liveable space. Her talk further illustrated the positive and energetic steps that some geographers are taking towards the implementation of a collaborative technique in working towards a better quality of life. This will to collaborate was typi®ed by the fact that I (Irene) was one of several foreigners to attend the conference. It was, however, quali®ed by the fact that I, and the other non-native English speaking people with whom I talked (notably some German students I met in one of the beautifully organized ®eldtrips around Belfast), agreed that we were not fully representative of our countries, because for the most part we study in the English speaking world. This is an observation, which on the one hand illustrates the openness of our host universities, but also suggests the need for a more active collaboration between different countries. To conclude, the active participation of members of the Historical Geography Research Group in joint sessions with a diversity of other study groups, including those concerned with Developing Areas, History and Philosophy, and Rural, Economic and Urban Geography, demonstrated the importance of historical geography as academic trade union within the broad discipline that is geography. Trinity College Dublin University of Gloucestershire
IRENE STRATI DEBRA MARSHALL
Tropical Views and Visions: Images of the Tropical World, National Maritime Museum, 12±13 July 2002 This conference, organised by Felix Davis and Luciana Martins (Royal Holloway, University of London), appraised images of and responses to tropical realms from the sixteenth century to the present. The perceivers were primarily European, the landscapes and peoples Indian, Paci®c, Caribbean and Amazonian. In this tropical gaze, Africa and Southeast Asia were largely absent. But the vistas were marvellously multidisciplinary. Historians of art and science, anthropologists and geographers, cartographic chroniclers and literary scholars from Australia and New Zealand, the Americas and the Paci®c inspired one another and stimulated a hundred responsive delegatesÐmuseum curators, heritage stewards, yachtsmen, academic vagabonds, amateurs and travellersÐin a dozen dazzlingly diverse papers. India as seen by two mid-nineteenth century Englishmen, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker and the writer±painter William Hodges, was sketched by David Arnold (SOAS) and Beth Fowkes Tobin (Arizona State). The Paci®c from the purview of Captain Cook and his reporters was the point of departure for Harriet Guest (York) and Nicholas Thomas (Goldsmith's), in exploring Oceanic diversity, linkages, and the much misunderstood but widely copied ritual of tattooing. Another Paci®c locale prompted Leonard Bell (Auckland) to study John Davis's late-nineteenth-century Samoan photographs, some paradigmatically `tropical', others evoking awareness of con¯icts over terrain between Samoans and outsiders. Depictions of early nineteenth-century Jamaica led Kay Dian Kriz (Brown University) to investigate imperial stereotypes of ``torrid zones and detoxi®ed landscapes'' in a broader racialized critique of West Indian climate. In ``Dominica and Tahiti'' Peter Hulme (Essex) showed how these two islands, Caribbean
276
CONFERENCE REPORTS
and Paci®c, conjoined as ``typically'' tropical, illumined changing stereotypes of indigenous Arawaks and Caribs, Polynesians and Melanesians. Indeed, all these papers deployed regional data in order to foreground general issues. In similar fashion, Martins and Driver's ``Traces on the sea-shore'' dwelt on tropical themes re¯ected in depictions of the locale and the salvaged remnants of HMS Thetis, wrecked in 1830 on Cape Frio Island northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Global through and through were the other papers. Nancy Ley Stepan (Columbia University) compared two pre-eminent botanical illustrators of the tropics, Marianne North in the nineteenth and Margaret Mee in the twentieth century, in terms of changing gender and painting conventions. Rod Edmond (Kent) addressed late nineteenth-century imperial and urban fears of tropical disease and degeneration felt to stem from infectious ailments, notably leprosy. D. Graham Burnett (Princeton) reviewed the insights of Matthew Fontaine Maury, the mid-nineteenth century American oceanographer whose conclusions, based on composite charts of whales and of ocean currents, anticipated the ®nding of the Northwest Passage. In showing how Alexander von Humboldt's sojourn in Venezuela inspired his ``physiological construction of the tropics'', Michael Dettelbach (Boston University) re¯ected on the marriageÐand the subsequent divorceÐof science and sensibility in Enlightenment, Romantic, and later views of nature. Certain themes dominated papers and discussions alike. One was changing notions of where and what are the tropics. At different times the Caribbean, the South Seas, and Amazonia have seemed the quintessence of tropicality. But that quality attaches even to places far north of the Tropic of Cancer, such as the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, and far south of the Tropic of Capricorn, like Tasmania. Tropical landscapes are prototypically hot and wet, with lush, dense vegetation. But these qualities evoke disparate evaluations. Now fruitful to the point of superabundance, now fearsome to the point of being lethal, tropical places are variously Edenic or horri®c, picturesque or sublime, chaotic or orderly. The word tropical derives from the Greek `trope', a turn, another point of view, with little connotation of climate. From our largely northern Eurocentric perspective, what lies to the south is seen as remote, exotic, other. In encountering and conquering tropical lands, imperial explorers and settlers sought in them a wide range of goals, material and spiritual. As Dettelbach noted in his summary, some found spectacular or freakish scenery, nature run wild, others the ideal state of society, still others an immanent divinity, the very lineaments of God. For many the tropics became a baf¯ing milieu where everything fell apart, for many others a locale of transcendence where everything came together. As highlighted in this conference, the tropics are a prime locale for historical geographers who, in tandem with colleagues from other callings, seek to make sense of their world, laden as it is with the residues of tropes and trophies of tropical subordination. University College London
DAVID LOWENTHAL
275
of architecture, the environment and liveable space. Her talk further illustrated the positive and energetic steps that some geographers are taking towards the implementation of a collaborative technique in working towards a better quality of life. This will to collaborate was typi®ed by the fact that I (Irene) was one of several foreigners to attend the conference. It was, however, quali®ed by the fact that I, and the other non-native English speaking people with whom I talked (notably some German students I met in one of the beautifully organized ®eldtrips around Belfast), agreed that we were not fully representative of our countries, because for the most part we study in the English speaking world. This is an observation, which on the one hand illustrates the openness of our host universities, but also suggests the need for a more active collaboration between different countries. To conclude, the active participation of members of the Historical Geography Research Group in joint sessions with a diversity of other study groups, including those concerned with Developing Areas, History and Philosophy, and Rural, Economic and Urban Geography, demonstrated the importance of historical geography as academic trade union within the broad discipline that is geography. Trinity College Dublin University of Gloucestershire
IRENE STRATI DEBRA MARSHALL
Tropical Views and Visions: Images of the Tropical World, National Maritime Museum, 12±13 July 2002 This conference, organised by Felix Davis and Luciana Martins (Royal Holloway, University of London), appraised images of and responses to tropical realms from the sixteenth century to the present. The perceivers were primarily European, the landscapes and peoples Indian, Paci®c, Caribbean and Amazonian. In this tropical gaze, Africa and Southeast Asia were largely absent. But the vistas were marvellously multidisciplinary. Historians of art and science, anthropologists and geographers, cartographic chroniclers and literary scholars from Australia and New Zealand, the Americas and the Paci®c inspired one another and stimulated a hundred responsive delegatesÐmuseum curators, heritage stewards, yachtsmen, academic vagabonds, amateurs and travellersÐin a dozen dazzlingly diverse papers. India as seen by two mid-nineteenth century Englishmen, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker and the writer±painter William Hodges, was sketched by David Arnold (SOAS) and Beth Fowkes Tobin (Arizona State). The Paci®c from the purview of Captain Cook and his reporters was the point of departure for Harriet Guest (York) and Nicholas Thomas (Goldsmith's), in exploring Oceanic diversity, linkages, and the much misunderstood but widely copied ritual of tattooing. Another Paci®c locale prompted Leonard Bell (Auckland) to study John Davis's late-nineteenth-century Samoan photographs, some paradigmatically `tropical', others evoking awareness of con¯icts over terrain between Samoans and outsiders. Depictions of early nineteenth-century Jamaica led Kay Dian Kriz (Brown University) to investigate imperial stereotypes of ``torrid zones and detoxi®ed landscapes'' in a broader racialized critique of West Indian climate. In ``Dominica and Tahiti'' Peter Hulme (Essex) showed how these two islands, Caribbean
276
CONFERENCE REPORTS
and Paci®c, conjoined as ``typically'' tropical, illumined changing stereotypes of indigenous Arawaks and Caribs, Polynesians and Melanesians. Indeed, all these papers deployed regional data in order to foreground general issues. In similar fashion, Martins and Driver's ``Traces on the sea-shore'' dwelt on tropical themes re¯ected in depictions of the locale and the salvaged remnants of HMS Thetis, wrecked in 1830 on Cape Frio Island northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Global through and through were the other papers. Nancy Ley Stepan (Columbia University) compared two pre-eminent botanical illustrators of the tropics, Marianne North in the nineteenth and Margaret Mee in the twentieth century, in terms of changing gender and painting conventions. Rod Edmond (Kent) addressed late nineteenth-century imperial and urban fears of tropical disease and degeneration felt to stem from infectious ailments, notably leprosy. D. Graham Burnett (Princeton) reviewed the insights of Matthew Fontaine Maury, the mid-nineteenth century American oceanographer whose conclusions, based on composite charts of whales and of ocean currents, anticipated the ®nding of the Northwest Passage. In showing how Alexander von Humboldt's sojourn in Venezuela inspired his ``physiological construction of the tropics'', Michael Dettelbach (Boston University) re¯ected on the marriageÐand the subsequent divorceÐof science and sensibility in Enlightenment, Romantic, and later views of nature. Certain themes dominated papers and discussions alike. One was changing notions of where and what are the tropics. At different times the Caribbean, the South Seas, and Amazonia have seemed the quintessence of tropicality. But that quality attaches even to places far north of the Tropic of Cancer, such as the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, and far south of the Tropic of Capricorn, like Tasmania. Tropical landscapes are prototypically hot and wet, with lush, dense vegetation. But these qualities evoke disparate evaluations. Now fruitful to the point of superabundance, now fearsome to the point of being lethal, tropical places are variously Edenic or horri®c, picturesque or sublime, chaotic or orderly. The word tropical derives from the Greek `trope', a turn, another point of view, with little connotation of climate. From our largely northern Eurocentric perspective, what lies to the south is seen as remote, exotic, other. In encountering and conquering tropical lands, imperial explorers and settlers sought in them a wide range of goals, material and spiritual. As Dettelbach noted in his summary, some found spectacular or freakish scenery, nature run wild, others the ideal state of society, still others an immanent divinity, the very lineaments of God. For many the tropics became a baf¯ing milieu where everything fell apart, for many others a locale of transcendence where everything came together. As highlighted in this conference, the tropics are a prime locale for historical geographers who, in tandem with colleagues from other callings, seek to make sense of their world, laden as it is with the residues of tropes and trophies of tropical subordination. University College London
DAVID LOWENTHAL