Off the beaten track? Critical approaches to exploration studies

Abstract

Since the 1980s, studying histories of exploration has become an increasingly prominent area of scholarship and has attracted critical attention from a range of different academic perspectives. Whether framed as a process of imperial expansion, as a quest for the production of new knowledge, or as a means for certain individuals to establish or advance their reputations, the complex motivations that lay behind European travellers' desire to venture overseas has been examined and critiqued by scholars situated in a number of different disciplines. Growing attention has been paid to those groups or individuals who have historically been written out of traditional, hagiographic exploration accounts, and we have seen the key roles played by women explorers, “indigenous intermediaries,” and various others exposed and investigated more thoroughly. The purpose of this paper is to review these diverse scholarly literatures, with a particular focus on those which centre their analysis on the long nineteenth century. In doing so, we demonstrate that the study of exploration is not just of narrow historical interest, but rather offers a means in which to shed new light on many wider social, political, and cultural processes that were taking place during this period.