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Maps of the South-Pacific: How Britain Invented Australia

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Maps of the South-Pacific: How Britain Invented Australia JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Maps of the South-Pacific: How Britain invented Australia Alessandro Bucci University of Edinburgh Email: [email protected] Keywords Cartography Representation South-Pacific Terra Australis Incognita Tabula Rasa Discovery Maps Abstract This study seeks to investigate an alternative view of land and of its cartographic representations. Such view sees land not as a priori given, but as available to be interpreted in relation to the subjective gaze of those who look at it and determine it as a social space. In particular, this study looks at the South-Pacific. The ‘discovery’ of the landmasses in that area is to be read in a typically European context, for it completes the vision of the world of those that had earlier ignored its existence. From this point of view, I have analyzed representations of Australia that show the evolution of how the rest of the world learnt to think about it. In particular, I have taken into account cartographic representations that show how the unknown lands of the South were turned into the fetished British possession of Australia. Looking at them is a useful way to develop considerations about the processes of appropriation of land by the British Empire. Contributor Note Alessandro Bucci is PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. His current research spans museology, fashion studies, and identity. cf.ac.uk/Jomec/Jomecjournal/6-november2014/Bucci_Maps.pdf Introduction: a gaze that leaves a sign analyzed as representations of the way in which these territories must have It seems unthinkable nowadays to appeared in the eyes of the explorers. consider that there might be big continents that we do not know of. The The cartographic representations I have evolution of satellite technologies has focused on show the evolution of a very guaranteed a deep knowledge of the peculiar transformation of Australia: land masses that can be found on the maps show its ‘evolution’ from being a surface of the earth – at least when the terra incognita, a part of the world analysis is limited to their existence – populated by savage monsters, to being the possibility of finding new ones is just the contemporary Australia of New South out of question. Maps give us such Wales and Queensland. The analysis of certainty and make this kind of these maps displays change of vision of knowledge easily accessible to everyone. those lands; they illustrate the In spite of this, such confident feeling is construction of a sense of British not very ancient. It was only the 19th ownership, while at the same time century when a new continent displaying misbalance between the core permanently appeared in the world of the Empire and its peripheries. picture: the British are considered to Furthermore, the existence of have completed the discoveries of the representations of the South-Pacific that lands in the South-Pacific and charted precedes the first European contacts is a them for the first time. In spite of earlier proof of rather mature traditions that contacts with these landmasses, their reflected upon the existence of land existence before that time represented a beyond the known world and its borders. big question mark and those lands were The unknown lands would eventually referred to as terrae incognitae – the turn into the known lands of the South- unknown lands. However, their territories Pacific, but their contemporary charts were included in cartographic represent- have not left behind the impressions of ations of the world before their official those who reached the costs of the ‘discovery’. Their presence on the maps South Pacific, crossing the delimitations gave scientific legitimation not only to of the world that was known to them. their doubtful existence, but also to that While looking on land for signs that of a whole set of preconceived ideas could make it – and its inhabitants- about what monstrosities such an intelligible and fall into known categories enormous distance was meant to be to facilitate the process of familiarization keeping away. with these new scenarios, the explorers’ This enquiry into the cartographic gaze was one that left its signs. It is by representation of the South-Pacific has a identifying some of those signs that number of origins and a number of appeared on maps produced after the sources. It is informed, to begin with, by official discovery that this study seeks to J.B. Harley’s innovative ideas about the develop considerations about the nature of maps (2001). Harley reads in processes of visualization and of the geographic precision that they production of these lands as part of the propose, the power relations, cultural British Empire. practices, preferences and priorities of This study draws on ideas in art history, those that have produced them. In the literature and the study of visual and light of his assumptions maps have been material culture; its sections are built on 1 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal the necessity for a discursive, subjective ‘many is the ancient chart that shows it, research method that establishes that sketched with a free and uncontrolled theoretical and socio-historical co- hand, around the South Pole’ (Wharton ordinates in which the final analysis of 1893: 14). maps has been conducted. Such method has been chosen with the validation of R. In spite of this, ‘for such centuries Murray Thomas’ outline of what such a Pomponius Mela and Ptolemy pondered method entails, that is, ‘gathering and in vain’ says John Cawte Beaglehole interpreting information from the view- (1947: 6), New Zealand historian and point of kinds of objects, ideas, or events’ editor of James Cook’s three journals of (Murray 2005: 225). A socio-semiotic exploration, in his Exploration of the approach for the interpretation of visual Pacific, a landmark publication in the and textual references will be used as a field of Southern Pacific historiography; template for the understanding of the those lands stood outside the thematic. representations that were offered by ecumenical geographical descriptions and mapping and it was also believed that getting there was forbidden. It was a Historical premises matter of faith that anyone sailing to the underside of the globe would end up Long before the official discovery of dying because of the tropical sun as he Australia geographers had stated that a crossed the Equator: scientific obser- vast continent of the size of Europe and vations showed, after all, that the more Asia lay in the southern half of the world. south one headed – and the closer to The existence of such a vast land the Equator- the warmer it grew. Also, a seemed essential to balance the weight sort of suspicion towards those that of the land masses of the northern inhabited the antipodes did not hemisphere. It was also thought to cover encourage in trying to overcome the the whole southern surface of the Earth borders. However, from the 16th century and to be in the midst of all the known on, intermittent yet periodic reports from oceans, the Atlantic, the Pacific and the pioneers in the Pacific seemed to imply Indian (Clarke 2002). The first European that the great southern continent was that provided a written account of the more than a legend and a belief in its existence of Australia was the Spanish existence became a commonplace geographer Pomponius Mela who wrote among most educated Europeans. By the about A.D. 50. Mela held that the times of James Cook, the occasions for continuity of the oceans in the unknown systematic explorations of the great southern hemisphere was interrupted by Pacific Ocean became more and more a continent of which Ceylon frequent; in those same days imperial possibly formed the northern tip; in competition became nail biting. this continent were the springs of European countries were eager to search the Nile, which flowed for and claim Terra Australis Incognita: subterraneously to emerge in Africa. both Britain and France sent their (Beaglehole 1947: 5) captains to the South Pacific, in a sort of In the I century A.D, Ptolemy was the first race. By 1766 Samuel Wallis and Philip to draw the borders of a vast Terra Carteret left for an expedition on behalf Australis Incognita, and from then on of Britain. The next year, the Chevalier de 2 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal Bouganville followed for France. And weeks, or two months previous to the finally, in 1769 the celestial transit of day of the transit.1 Venus between the Sun and the Earth provided another reason for undertaking The second plan was the secret one and a new voyage. British admiral of the Navy an additional instruction as the letter William J. L. Wharton carefully reports specifies. Once the scientific purpose of this episode in his 1893 Preface to a the expedition for which the Endeavour transcription of Captain Cook’s journal voyage was originally commissioned by during his first voyage round the world. the Royal Society of London was fulfilled, To put it in his words: Cook was ordered to head south for 1500 miles, where Douglas (1768) A transit of Venus over the sun’s thought that ‘there is reason to imagine disc was to occur in 1769, and that a continent of land of great extent, astronomers were anxious to take may be found’. As described in the letter advantage of it, the object of the to Sir Joseph Banks, naturalist and observation being to ascertain the botanist who also took part to the first distance of the earth from the sun, voyage on the Endevour: the fundamental base line in all astronomical measurements, and When that business is finished, which was very imperfectly known.
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