Place and Space on High: Science in the Himalaya
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NO. 115: MARCH 2018 ISSN: 1751-8261 MAGAZINE OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Contents Science in the Himalaya 1-3 Great Trigonometrical Survey 4-6 Poetry & Cartography 7-10 Ancient Volcanoes 11-13 Northern Exploration 13-14 Interview – Erin Beetson 15 BJHS, Viewpoint, BSHS info. 16 Editorial I Histories of space and place are increas- inly hot topics, so this issue features current research from trailblazers in the history of geography. Lachlan Fleet- wood leads the way with an examina- tion of the Himalaya as sites and sub- ABOVE Section from Heinrich Berghaus’s Umrisse der Pflanzengeographie (1838). Map- jects of 19th-century science (1), while ping people, plants, animals, and fossils in three dimensions was essential to making the Keith Lilley takes us out into the field to Himalaya into a unit that could compared with other parts of the vertical globe. explore the archaeology of the Great Image: courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com. Trigonometrical Survey of India (4). Travelling further back in time, Kader Hegedüs examines the relationship Place and Space on High: between John Donne’s poetry and Renaissance cartography (7), while Jason König and Dawn Hollis consider Science in the Himalaya volcanoes in classical georgaphical and cultural landscapes (11). Lachlan Fleetwood explores the science of mountains. Finally, Linda Andersson Burnett investigates Carl Linnaeus’s interest in northern periphery exploration (13). We Few places have captured European distance exactly resembled men; and the also have an interview with Manches- romantic, imperial, and scientific imagina- instant my people observed them, they ter PhD student Erin Beetson (15), and tions more fully than the Himalaya. While said they were the Tartars waiting for notices of upcoming events (3). exploring near the frontier with Tibet in me; I thought the same, as they had a This issue has been co-edited with 1821 in pursuit of these ends, East India very suspicious appearance from below, Hazel Blair, who will take over as View- Company surveyor Alexander Gerard and I could not divest myself of the point Editor next issue. Contributions found himself becoming increasingly belief (although the guides assured should be sent to [email protected]. paranoid: me that they were shughars) till I looked uk by 15 April 2018. through the glass. Upon the surrounding heights near Hazel Blair and Alice White, Editors the Pass are many shughars or piles of Fears assuaged by the deployment of stones sacred to the gods, and which at a his telescope, Gerard admitted some 2 Viewpoint No. 115 ABOVE “The Snowy Range from Tyne or Marma,” from George Francis White’s Views in India (1838). A European traveller gazes out at the Himalaya in this typically heroic and romantic image, but the porters in the foreground inadvertently reveal his dependence on local labour, routes, and expertise. Image: Public Domain hopes of penetrating further into what In my current research, the high spaces have to tell for the first half of the 19th was becoming one of the most pressing of the Himalaya and their mountainous century, when they were becoming both ‘blank spaces’ on European maps. These topography, social and cultural geogra- subjects and spaces of scientific practice. were quickly dashed, however, as he phy, and human and non-human dimen- Gerard’s conflation of shughars and crossed the altitude sickness-inducing sions are cast in protagonistic roles. In border guards reflects the East India high pass only to meet a group of Tartars this article, I take the opportunity to Company’s growing insecurity around – real, this time, rather than imaginary – outline some of the stories the Himalaya the lack of knowledge of the vast and who had learned he was coming and vertiginous mountains that made up were waiting to politely but firmly send their northern frontier. This ignorance, him back to the lowlands. Moments like combined with growing concerns about this are revealing of the limits of imperial Russian and Chinese activities on the mastery in the high mountains, while the High mountain other side of the mountains, saw the shughars, which served as both waymark- Himalaya take on the characteristics of ers and shrines, simultaneously remind cartographic ‘blank space,’ a rendering us that these had long been lived and environments which was important not just in clearing inscribed landscapes. away indigenous presences in prepara- tested the tion for European aesthetic and imperial SITES OF SCIENCE appropriation, but also in compelling Recognition of the situatedness of relationships scientific exploration. scientific practice and attention to space It was only in the 1810s that it was and place is now ubiquitous in the history becoming acknowledged – first in India of science. Building on this, scholars have between instru- by lowly military surveyors, later (and not productively used geographical features without some doubt and even outrage) like oceans, islands, and beaches as sites ments, authority by savants in Europe – that the Himalaya and scales for global histories of science, were, in fact, the highest mountains on and to disrupt older national and area and bodily the globe, far higher even than Alexander studies framings, though mountains have von Humboldt’s Chimborazo. only recently begun to receive equiva- Just how much higher took some lently extensive attention. performance. grasping. Commenting on a new type of Viewpoint No. 115 3 thermometer for measuring altitude, one Spanning some 2,400 kilometres in that had been tested on Mount Snowdon a roughly crescent shaped band across in Wales before being sent out to India, Asia, the Himalaya are one of the most Notices oriental scholar James Prinsep was exas- striking geographical features of our perated to find that as the range of its planet, though this scale would not ESHS Conference 2018 scale ‘only extends to an altitude of 5405 necessarily have been meaningful or th feet, it is evidently quite insufficient for useful to those who who made their lives The 8 European Society for the the traveller in India, who may ascend to in the mountains. Here, even the idea History of Science (ESHS) Biennial 18,000 feet and still see Snowdons tower- of studying ‘the Himalaya’ as a space of Conference will be held in London ing above his head.’ scientific practice perhaps reflects ves- from 14-17 September 2018. tiges of an older romantic, orientalist, and The conference – which is being ALTITUDE SICKNESS imperial fascination with Asia’s notori- organised in conjunction with the Accurately measuring altitude had ously ‘mysterious’ and ‘exotic’ mountains British Society for the History of Sci- not been especially important before – though these framings, too, have ence – will be held at University Col- the late-18th century, but was becoming their histories. lege London’s Institute of Education. essential to both imperial cartography Whatever the early tropes casting the The conference theme this year is and to sciences like biogeography and Himalaya as impenetrable, they were ‘Unity and Disunity’. Registration will geology. Measuring the Himalaya was – and long had been – highly porous. open on 1 May. nevertheless a vexed business, not only Extensive networks had operated within More details can be found on because of inadequate and easily dam- and through the mountains for millennia the website: http://www.eshs.org/ aged instruments, but also because in prior to European interest, and imperial Oct-2017-8th-ESHS-Conference-Lon- high mountain spaces scale is difficult to science and exploration in the Himalaya don-2018.html. judge and the senses are untrustworthy. advanced by following the routes and John Anthony Hodgson, one of the first advice of residents, traders, migrants, surveyor generals of India, bemoaned and pilgrims. that ‘whether it be from the changes in Meanwhile, the Himalaya had also long Visiting Fellowship: Oxford the atmosphere on high mountains, or been central to the imaginations of South the inconvenience of being exposed to Asians more broadly, holding key places The Centre for the History and severe cold & high winds, I find my obser- in both Buddhist and Hindu cosmology, Philosophy of Physics (HAPP) at St vations never agree a fourth part so well and playing, for example, important roles Cross College, University of Oxford as on the plains.’ in the Mahabharata and the Puranas. is able to offer one Visiting Fellow- While these spaces might ultimately The term ‘Himalaya’ has its etymology in ship a term for scholars coming to have been less idiosyncratic than survey- Sanskrit, and is often translated as ‘abode Oxford to carry out research on a ors inevitably insisted they were, high of snow,’ a description that is nevertheless topic in the history and philosophy mountain environments nevertheless only intermittently apt given that vast of physics. tested the relationships between instru- swathes of the mountains are formed of Visiting Fellowships carry full ments, authority and bodily performance. high-altitude deserts. membership of the College with Alongside problems of scale and sen- As with James Prinsep’s reference to use of all its facilities and Visiting sory derangement, the highest spaces Snowdon, invoking other mountains was Fellows are required to be based in were marked by physiological travails. In a standard trope, and travellers could not Oxford for the term in which they 1821, Alexander’s brother James Gilbert ascend the Himalaya without drawing hold the position. Gerard stood at 15,000 feet and noted on imperial networks to compare them, Details on how to apply can be that ‘the scene is therefore of unap- especially to the Alps and the Andes. found on the webpage: www.stx. proachable grandeur,’ a typical recourse Recognition that high mountains were ox.ac.uk/happ/scholarships-visiting- to the picturesque and the sublime.