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E-book Curious Encounters : Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century

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Penilaian

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Our histories of global exploration and encounter in the long eigh-teenth century are often drawn from the scientific voyages of discovery and their richly illustrated books, like John Ross’s A Voyage of Discovery(1819). Ross voyaged in the Enlightenment tradition of Bougainville and Cook, who had returned to Europe in ships laden with knowledge in the form of diverse natural and artificial curiosities, innovative images, observations, even people. These global voyages transformed European systems of knowledge and aesthetics, while the missionary, military, and commercial interests that often followed their tracks profoundly affected indigenous people the world over. Ross failed to find the Northwest Passage through the High Arctic, but he made his claim to original discovery in his encounter with an Inuit group previously unknown to Europeans. Ross, a Scotsman, claimed credit for discovering the Inughuit of Qaanaaq in northern Greenland, and named them “Arctic Highlanders.” The Inughuit “exist in a corner of the world by far the most secluded which has yet to be discovered,” wrote Ross, and had “until the moment of our arrival, believed them-selves to be the only inhabitants of the universe.” 1 Spending several days meeting with the Inughuit on the ice and aboard his ship, Ross described their “astonishment” (94), “terror and amazement” (85) upon seeing the British ships, weapons, and scientific instruments – all set pieces within the “encounter genre” of Enlightenment exploration. 2 Ross’s conven-tional version of the meaning of these encounters, and of the isolation of the “Arctic Highlanders” as the literal location of the mythic Ultima Thule, are partial stories that have become iconic examples of European exploration and encounter. They are the “relics” of our disciplined his-tories, as Greg Dening would say. But, as Nicholas Thomas has pointed out, “knowing was never a one-way activity.” 3 Inuit stories and Inuit images of these encounters allow us to imagine otherwise, to consider what Greenlanders may have discovered in their encounters with these “peculiar floating samples” 4 of Britain. Accompanying Ross’s expedition was an indigenous Greenlander known to the British as John Sacheuse (aka Zacheus), who orchestrated the first contact with the Inughuit. 5 Converted by Moravian missionaries in Disko Bay, Sacheuse voluntarily boarded a whaler for Edinburgh in 1816, and lived the rest of his extraordinary and brief life traversing the borders of several cultures. In Edinburgh, Sacheuse had met two leading figures in the arts and sciences: Alexander Nasmyth, the leading landscape painter of the age, and Sir Basil Hall, a naval captain and brother to the president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He studied painting in Nasmyth’s prestigious school and accompanied Ross as a paid interpreter on board the Isabella. We know that the Isabella was searching for the Northwest Passage, but what was Sacheuse searching for?

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

909.81 BRA c

Penerbit

Canada : University of Toronto Press., 2019

Deskripsi Fisik

255 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781487503673

Klasifikasi

909.81

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

World History 19th Century, 1800 - 1899

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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