Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T07:10:59.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2023

Adrian Howkins
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Peder Roberts
Affiliation:
University of Stavanger
Get access

Summary

No era of polar history has received more attention than the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Its three most famous explorers – Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, and Ernest Shackleton – have been the subjects not only of academic research, but also of novels, plays, films, television programmes, and exhibitions at major museums. Rather than retelling in detail a familiar story, this chapter will trace how the history of the Heroic Age has evolved over the past century or so. Its core argument is that the very features which made it so compelling in the first decades of the twentieth century have made its place in recent European and American culture more problematic. It will conclude by suggesting a new way of thinking about the Heroic Age.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailkin, Jordanna, “The Boot and the Spleen: When Was Murder Possible in British India?”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 (2006): 462493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barczewski, Stephanie, Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism (London: Continuum, 2008).Google Scholar
Beck, Peter, “Securing the Dominant ‘Place in the Wan Antarctic Sun’ for the British Empire: The Policy of Extending British Control over Antarctica”, Australian Journal of Politics and History 29 (1983): 448461.Google Scholar
Blackadder, Jesse, “Frozen Voices: Women, Silence and Antarctica”, in Hince, Bernadette, Summerson, Rupert, and Wiesel, Arnan, eds., Antarctica: Music, Sounds and Cultural Connections (Acton: ANU Press, 2015), pp. 168178.Google Scholar
Bloom, Lisa, Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Burns, Robin, Just Tell Them I Survived! Women in Antarctica (Crow’s Nest, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin, 2001).Google Scholar
Carter, Christopher, “Going Global in Polar Exploration: Ninteenth-Century American and British Nationalism and Peacetime Science”, in Launius, Roger D, Fleming, James Rodger, and DeVorkin, David H, eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 85105.Google Scholar
Chipman, Elizabeth, Women on the Ice: A History of Women in the Far South (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Collis, Christy, “The Australian Antarctic Territory: A Man’s World?”, Signs 34 (2009): 514519.Google Scholar
Collis, Christy, “Mawson’s Hut: Emptying Post-colonial Antarctica”, Journal of Australian Studies 23 (1999): 2229.Google Scholar
Cronenwett, Philip N., “Publishing Arctic Science in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of the First International Polar Year”, in Launius, Roger D., Fleming, James Rodger, and DeVorkin, David H., eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 3746.Google Scholar
Day, David, Flaws in the Ice: In Search of Douglas Mawson (Melbourne: Scribe, 2013).Google Scholar
DiPiero, Thomas, White Men Aren’t (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dodds, Klaus J., and Kathryn Yusoff, , “Settlement and Unsettlement in Autearoa/New Zealand and Antarctica”, Polar Record 41 (2005): 141155.Google Scholar
Driver, Felix, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).Google Scholar
Elzinga, Aant, “Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and for Science”, in Crawford, Elisabeth, Shinn, Terry, and Sörlin, Sverker, eds., Denationalizing Science (Berlin: Springer, 1993), pp. 73106.Google Scholar
Elzinga, Aant, and Bohlin, Ingemar, “The Politics of Science in Polar Regions”, in Elzinga, Aant, ed., Changing Trends in Antarctic Research (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), pp. 727.Google Scholar
Farley, Rebecca, “‘By Endurance We Conquer’: Ernest Shackleton and Performances of White Male Hegemony”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (2005): 231254.Google Scholar
Glasberg, Elena, Antarctica as Cultural Critique: The Gendered Politics of Scientific Exploration and Climate Change (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).Google Scholar
Glasberg, Elena, “The Last Place on Earth: Antarctica and Virtual Capitalism”, Political and Legal Anthropology Review 21 (1998): 6576.Google Scholar
Glasberg, Elena, “‘Living Ice’: Rediscovery of the Poles in an Era of Climate Crisis”, Women’s Studies Quarterly 39 (2011): 221246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godwin, Joscelyn, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993).Google Scholar
Gott, Richard, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (London: Verso, 2012).Google Scholar
Griffiths, Trevor, Judgement over the Dead: The Screenplay to The Last Place on Earth (London: Verso, 1986).Google Scholar
Hains, Brigid, The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn and the Myth of the Frontier (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Headland, Robert K., “Antarctic Odyssey: Historical Stages in Development of Knowledge of Antarctica”, in Elzinga, Aant, Nordin, T., Turner, D., and Wråkberg, U., eds., Antarctic Challenges: Historical and Current Perspectives on Otto Nordenskjöld’s Antarctic Expedition 1901–1903 (Göteborg: Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburgh, 2004), pp. 1524.Google Scholar
Howitt, Rohan, “The Japanese Antarctic Expedition and the Idea of White Australia”, Australian Historical Studies 49 (2018): 510526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howkins, Adrian, “Emerging from the Shadow of Science: Challenges and Opportunities for Antarctic History”, in Roberts, Peder, Howkins, Adrian, and Lize-Marié, van der Watt, eds., Antarctica and the Humanities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 251272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulbe, Christina L., Weili Wang, , and Simon Ommanney, , “Women in Glaciology: An Historical Perspective”, Journal of Glaciology 56 (2010). www-cambridge-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/women-in-glaciology-a-historical-perspective/205304CE84CEFFCC59FA4BC83AB962AE/core-readerGoogle Scholar
Huntford, Roland, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole (New York: Modern Library, 1999).Google Scholar
Huntford, Roland, Shackleton (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1985).Google Scholar
Hurley, Frank, The Diaries of Frank Hurley 1912–1941 (London: Anthem, 2011).Google Scholar
Jones, Max, The Last Great Quest: Captain Scott’s Antarctic Sacrifice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Jones, Max, “‘The Truth about Captain Scott’: The Last Place on Earth, Debunking, Sexuality and Decline in the 1980s”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42 (2014): 857881.Google Scholar
Jones, Max, Berny, Sèbe, John, Strachan, Bertrand, Taithe, and Peter, Yeandle, “Introduction: Decolonising Imperial Heroes: Britain and France”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42 (2014): 787825.Google Scholar
Keighren, Innes M., “Of Poles, Pressmen and the Newspaper Public: Reporting the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902–1904”, Scottish Geographical Journal 121 (2005): 203218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koehn, Nancy F., Helms, Erica, and Philip, Mead, “Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance”, Harvard Business School Case 803–127 (April 2003; revised December 2010), www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=29815 (accessed 10 October 2020).Google Scholar
Kolsky, Elizabeth, Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence and the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Land, Barbara, The New Explorers: Women in Antarctica (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1981).Google Scholar
Larson, Edward J., An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Launius, Roger D., “Toward the Poles: A Historiography of Scientific Exploration during the International Polar Years and the International Geophysical Year”, in Launius, Roger D., Fleming, James Rodger, and DeVorkin, David H., eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 4781.Google Scholar
Leane, Elizabeth, “Antarctic Diaries and Heroic Reputations: Changing the Subject”, in Roberts, Peder, Howkins, Adrian, and Lize-Marié, van der Watt, eds., Antarctica and the Humanities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 2751.Google Scholar
Lowe, Keith, Prisoners of History: What Our Memorials to World War II Tell Us about Our History and Ourselves (New York: St Martin’s, 2020).Google Scholar
Morrell, Margaret, and Stephanie, Capparell, Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Explorer (New York, London: Penguin, 2001).Google Scholar
Murphy, David Thomas, German Exploration of the Polar World: A History, 1870–1940 (Lincoln, NE, London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Nash, Meredith, Nielsen, Hanne E. F., Shaw, Justine et al., “‘Antarctica Just Has this Hero Factor’: Gendered Barriers to Australian Antarctic Research and Remote Fieldwork”, PLoS One (16 January 2019), https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0209983.Google Scholar
Riffenburgh, Beau, The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery (New York: Belhaven, 1993).Google Scholar
Riffenburgh, Beau, ‘Nimrod’: Ernest Shackleton and the Extraordinary Story of the 1907–09 British Antarctic Expedition (London: Bloomsbury, 2005).Google Scholar
Roberts, David, Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).Google Scholar
Roberts, Peder, The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).Google Scholar
Roberts, Peder, “Heroes for the Past and Present: A Century of Remembering Amundsen and Scott”, Endeavour 35 (2011): 142150.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, Peder, “The White (Supremacist) Continent: Antarctica and Fantasies of Nazi Survival”, in Roberts, Peder, Howkins, Adrian, and Lize-Marié, van der Watt, eds., Antarctica and the Humanities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 107112.Google Scholar
Roberts, Peder, Adrian Howkins, and Lize-Marié , van der Watt, “Antarctica: A Continent for the Humanities”, in Roberts, Peder, Howkins, Adrian, and Lize-Marié, van der Watt, eds., Antarctica and the Humanities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 123.Google Scholar
Robinson, Michael F., The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Ryan, Simon, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Scott, Robert Falcon, Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1996).Google Scholar
Scott, Robert Falcon, The Voyage of the Discovery, Vols. I and II (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Seag, Morgan, “Women Need Not Apply: Gendered Institutional Change in Antarctica and Outer Space”, Polar Record 7 (2017): 319335.Google Scholar
Sherman, Taylor, State Violence and Punishment in India (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2010).Google Scholar
Solomon, Susan, The Coldest March: Scott’s Fatal Antarctic Expedition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Spufford, Francis, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination (London: Faber & Faber, 1996).Google Scholar
Stevenson, William R., III, “The Polar Years and Japan”, in Launius, Roger D., Fleming, James Rodger, and DeVorkin, David H., eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar and Geophysical Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 123141.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, Colin, and Beeching, Peter, “Hitler’s Antarctic Base: The Myth and the Reality”, Polar Record 43 (2007): 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Summerhayes, Colin, and Lüdecke, Cornelia, The Third Reich in Antarctica: The German Antarctica Expedition 1938–39 (Norwich: Erskine, 2012).Google Scholar
Tharoor, Shashi, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (London: Hurst, 2017).Google Scholar
Turney, Chris, 1912: The Year the World Discovered Antarctica (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012).Google Scholar
Uenuma, Francine, “George Washington Gibbs Jr. Defied Danger and Racism to Become the First African-American to Visit Antarctica”, Smithsonian (27 February 2019). www.smithsonianmag.com/history/george-washington-gibbs-jr-defied-danger-and-racism-become-first-african-american-visit-antarctica-180971568/Google Scholar
van der Watt, Lize-Marié, and Sandra, Swart, “The Whiteness of Antarctica: Race and South Africa’s Antarctic History”, in Roberts, Peder, Howkins, Adrian, and Lize-Marié, van der Watt, eds., Antarctica and the Humanities (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 125156.Google Scholar
van Sittert, Lance, “‘Ironman’: Joseph Daniels and the White History of South Africa’s Deep South”, Polar Record 51 (2015): 501512.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×