driver, felix-imaging the tropics

8/13/2019 Driver, Felix-Imaging the Tropics

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Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 25(1), 2004, 1-17

Copyright 2004 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishers Ltd

It is appropriate that a journal such as this

should periodically take stock of its raison

dtre, which in our case means reflecting upon

the multiple histories and geographies

resonating within its very title (Grundy-Warr

et al., 2003; Savage, 2003). Recent work

published in these pages has raised far-

reaching questions concerning the genealogy

and the spatiality of the subdiscipline of

tropical geography, most notably in relation

to contemporary concerns with colonialism,

postcolonialism, the politics of developmentand fieldwork (Driver & Yeoh, 2000; Bowd &

Clayton, 2003; Sidaway et al., 2003). In the

present paper, my focus is less on the origins

and evolution of tropical geography as a

component of the modern geographical

discipline than on the history of ideas and

images of tropicality, and the role these have

played in the construction of knowledge about

the tropical world over a longer period of time.

Such issues of epistemology transcend andin a sense precede the formation of particular

subdisciplines. To an extent, they also extend

beyond particular national research schools

and traditions. For example, that great theorist

of tropical geography, Alexander von

Humboldt (1769-1859), was a Prussian who

(following his return from his travels in the

Americas) spent the most productive years of

his long working life in Paris and whose

influence was felt across the English-speakingworld and beyond (notably in Latin America;

see Holl & Reschke, 1999). During his lifetime,

which approximately corresponds to the period

under scrutiny in this paper, a series of

exemplary tropical sites the tropical forest,

the desert island, the mountain scene and the

coastal view was brought into focus, not for

the first time, but in ways which left a lasting

impression on the discourses of tropicality.

While I am principally concerned here with

an era before the institutionalisation of modern

academic geography, this paper addresses in

rather a precise sense the disciplining ofgeographical knowledge. The production and

circulation of authoritative knowledge about

the tropical world during the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, and especially the

making and recording of observations in situ,

required a particular kind of discipline of the

senses. This sort of discipline has often been

conceived by historians of science in terms of

the heightened emphasis on instrumentation

within the field sciences during this period andthe impetus to precision which this represents,

as for example in the celebrated case of

Humboldt himself (Cannon, 1978; Bourguet et

al., 2002). While this focus on instruments is

in itself necessary and tells us much about the

epistemology of contemporary natural science,

it is as important to recognise that the making

of observations in the field also required the

deployment of specific kinds of embodied skill

in the production of images and inscriptions as reflected, for example, in what might be

called the instrumentalisation of hand and

IMAGINING THE TROPICS: VIEWS AND VISIONS OF

THE TROPICAL WORLD

Felix Driver

Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Editors Note: The following is the third in the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography Lecture

Series. It was presented at a special session of the annual conference of the Royal Geographical

Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in London on 4 September 2003.


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2 Driver

eye. In this paper, I focus especially on the

place of a particular kind of visual image the

sketch made on the spot within two

connected spheres of knowledge: natural

history and navigation.1

In both these fields,the application of graphic skills in the

depiction of tropical natures forms was

regarded as essential to the production of

authoritative knowledge. Here we are

concerned as much with practice as with

representation; or more precisely, with

practices of knowledge-making, and what

happens to them in the process of circulation

through the tropical world.

IMAGINING THE TROPICS

The modern dictionary definition of the tropics

tells a story of limits and the spaces between

them: in one form or another, it refers us to two

parallels of latitude stretching around the

earth, one 2327 north of the equator and the

other 2327 south of the equator, together

defining the boundary of that region in which

the sun may shine directly overhead. The

circles of Cancer and Capricorn, which have

since ancient times constituted the carto-

graphic definition of the torrid zone, yield a

variety of further stories, connecting

astronomy, astrology, cosmography and myth.

The Greek root of the word tropics means a

turning, which refers both to the rotations of

the spheres and the notion of limits, here both

natural and moral. The inter-tropical zone has

frequently been imagined, as it was in antiquity,

as a realm of otherness, beyond the habitablehuman realm (Cosgrove, 2001:29-53).

There are of course an infinite number of

ways of dividing global space. In an essay

entitled Of Map Drawing published in 1878,

for example, John Ruskin (1904) proposed a

new design for globes for use in schools.

These globes were to be inscribed with ten

latitudinal circles, each with its own name, such

as the Arabian, the Venetian, and the Christian.

Those nearest the equator, enclosing the most

glowing space of the tropics, he called St

Johns and St Jamess circles, after the apostles.

(Christ is supposed to have named them

Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, because of

their fiery zeal. They had called on God to

throw down fire from heaven in order to punish

the Samaritans.) Divided by these ten circlestogether with 24 Meridians, Ruskin (1904:445)

wanted his globe to be simply coloured:

within the Arctic circles, the sea pale

sapphire, and the land white; in the

temperate zones, the sea full lucia, and

the land pale emerald; and between the

tropics, the sea full violet, and the land

pale clarissa.

In place of the divisions and boundaries on

nineteenth-century globes, then, Ruskin had

substituted a graphic design with an ancient

pedigree. His representation of global space,

which would generally be regarded as fanciful

today, was in fact designed to enhance

students appreciation of principles of projec-

tion and their application in the graphic arts.

The key point in the present context, however,

is that his nomenclature and his system carry

no more symbolic meaning than those on aconventional globe.

But we can go further than this, in so far as

the tropics were and are conceived as a

conceptual as well as a cartographic space.

Whether the adjective tropical denotes a

particular kind of experience, a look, a species,

a landform, a soil or a meteorological event,

the term carries with it a powerful array of

associations which may or may not be tiedvery specifically to a particular geographical

zone or location. In this paper, I am particularly

concerned with what constitutes a tropical

view or vision, and with some of the ways in

which the tropical has been imagined as itself

a view or a vision to be experienced. The

representation of the tropics as a discrete

space, or perhaps more accurately as a distinct

set of associations, constitutes an important

part of this story. Indeed, the contrast between

the tropical and the temperate is one of

the most enduring themes in the history of

global imaginings. Whether represented


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positively (as in fantasies of the tropical

sublime) or negatively (as a pathological space

of degeneration), tropical nature has frequently

served as a foil to the temperate, to all that is

modest, civilised, cultivated. In this sense, as

has recently been suggested in the pages ofthis journal, we might think of ideas about

tropical difference as part of a wider discourse,

akin to the discourse of Orientalism which

works to define and delimit the essential

difference between East and West. Just as the

discourse of Orientalism has its genealogists

following in the tracks of Edward Said, so too

the discourse of tropicality has attracted the

attention of an increasing number of historians

(see, for example, Arnold, 1996:141-68; Driver& Yeoh, 2000; Stepan, 2001; Livingstone, 2002;

Bowd & Clayton, 2003).

Over the centuries, notions of the tropical

have thus been enrolled in a variety of

philosophical, political, scientific, medical and

aesthetic projects. Within the discourses of

natural history, travel and exploration, for

example, the theme of tropicality has had a

remarkably sustained influence, even when

perhaps espec ial ly when the actual

experience of tropical travel has failed to live

up to expectations. Its presence can also be

detected in a host of other cultural forms, from

epic poetry to landscape painting, as well as

in historical and philosophical reflections on

human nature and the wealth of nations. In

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we see

tropical difference given institutional ex-

pression in the emergence of distinct sub-

disciplinary specialisms tropical climatology,tropical geography and, most notably, tropical

medicine though in each of these fields the

definition and limits of the tropical have been

anything but settled. In the course of the last

50 years, the discourse on tropicality has

further proliferated under the influence of

decolonisation, development, global tourism,

commodity advertising and environmental

politics. Images of the tropics, then, have long

been the site for European fantasies of self-realisation, projects of cultural imperialism and

the politics of human or environmental

salvage. In the post-colonial world, these

fantasies have, if anything, become more

pervasive, if distinctly less enchanting. And

the imaginative flow has certainly not at all

been one-way. Artists and intellectuals seeking

new cultural forms to describe their work inwhat we now call the global South have

themselves appropriated the language of

tropicality for their own ends. Think, for

example, of the aesthetic of tropical modernism

which informed the work of the Brazilian

landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx

(Stepan, 2000); or the ambivalent cultural

politics of the tropicliamovement in Brazilian

popular music, as represented in the work of

Caetano Veloso (Dunn, 2002). In both thesecases, moreover, we move beyond the tired

oppositions between core and periphery: here

the problematic relationship between indi-

genous and cosmopolitan cultural forms is

empowering, not disabling.

In fact, this process of cultural exchange

transculturation, if you like brings into

question some of the ways in which

discourses like Orientalism have often been

conceived. In particular, the model of

projection which drives many accounts of

colonial discourse the West projecting its

sense of cultural difference on the rest is

badly in need of repair. One obvious risk is

that images (like the Orient or tropicality)

are conceived as already fully formed, ready-

to-be-projected, a position which greatly

exaggerates their coherence and consistency.

Another is that the cultural and natural worlds

are represented as a homogenous screen onwhich these images are depicted. In such a

perspective, the discourse of tropicality would

project an image of the tropical world which

was produced by and for Europe, unconta-

minated as it were by anything in between.

Instead, we might develop ways of conceiving

this process in terms of transactions rather

than projections: to think of images, certainly,

but to understand the process of their being

made as negotiated in various ways (Driver &Yeoh, 2000:2-3). This would enable the

production of knowledge about the tropical

Imagining the Tropics 3


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world to be understood as a more differ-

entiated, more uneven and ultimately more

human process; moreover, it would give more

agency, and autonomy, to the world being

represented. No longer a screen, but now aliving space of encounter and exchange.

One of the limitations of the language of

projection is that it tends to collapse an

argument about particular kinds of cultural

production into an argument about global

history as a whole, in which some cultures

and some spaces are essentially active and

others passive: in a nutshell, the West

represents the Rest. Yet, the thing which today

is called Europe has actually come into

being through various kinds of exchange with

the rest of the world. Culturally as well as

economically speaking, this Europe has

never been self-sufficient: it has always

learned, borrowed or stolen from elsewhere.

We have become so used to thinking of

European expansion including the explo-

ration and colonisation of the tropical world

as the means of extending and dramatising an

already existing worldview that we haveunderestimated the extent to which the process

of extension is actually transformative of the

European sense of self, culture, history (Hall,

1992). A fascinating if relatively late (and in

the grand scheme of things, rather minor)

example of this process at work may be found

in the career of the French historian Fernand

Braudel, who like several of his peers

(including the anthropologist Claude Lvi-

Strauss and the geographer Pierre Monbeig)spent a formative period teaching in Brazil in

the 1930s. Reflecting on his career in later years,

Braudel once remarked that it was his period

in Brazil that turned him into a true intellectual.

It is, indeed, a striking revelation the design

of that masterwork, The Mediterranean and

the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip

II(Braudel, 1976), conceived not in France,

but in the very-nearly tropical So Paolo. Or

rather, in the transatlantic shuttling between

these worlds which Braudel experienced

during the late 1930s, wintering in the archives

of Europe, spending the rest of the year in

Brazil (Paris, 1996; Skidmore, 2003).With that

other great geographical historian Lucien

Febvre, whom he met by chance on one of his

transatlantic crossings, Braudel later edited a

special issue of the journalAnnalesdevotedto the Latin Americas (in the plural,

significantly). The words of the introduction

still resonate today, half a century on:

Are we going to forget that we,

historians of the Old World, face the

Atlantic? This is recognised, even

today, in the quality and considerable

importance for us of a history that is as

much European, as fully European, as

it is powerfully South American. A

history that is an integral part of our

national histories, but still more of our

cultural history. A history of back-and-

forth movement, of loans and

repayments, of borrowings and refused

borrowings, of adventurous comings

and goings with composite interest. It

is already one of the first and most

important chapters in this history of

exchanges of worlds that each of usbegins in our dreams to develop for the

near future (Febvre, 1948, cited in

Mattelart, 1996:194-95).

TROPICAL VIEWS AND

VISIONS

The remainder of this paper addresses one

theme in this multiform history of exchanges

of worlds: specifically, the ways in which thetropics were visualised by eighteenth- and

nineteenth-century European travellers, and

the role of graphic images in the production

and circulation of knowledges about the

tropical world. In this context, we can

understand the view as developing within a

topographic aesthetic, through which

landscapes are depicted at a distance, their

surface features translated into a recognisable

visual code. In this very general sense, the

term belongs equally to landscape sketching,

coastal survey and terrestrial mapping,

referring as it does to the apprehension of

4 Driver


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portions of the earths surface at a distance.

The vision, in contrast, is something which in

principle takes hold of the observer in a more

transformative way: it engages the imagination,

turning the spectator into an active participant

in the scene. Where the view is the product ofan enlightened rationality, the vision is the

means of asserting a new sensibility: not just

of an image of a discrete portion of space, but

the realisation of a new sense of the whole, in

which the eye of the observer is itself brought

into the frame. In practice, of course, the

distinction between views and visions is

more about epistemology than practice or

effect, or indeed affect. In particular, it is quite

possible (as I shall argue below) to treat thecharts and views of the surveyor as vestiges

of experience especially the experience of

trial and error rather than merely as inani-

mate data from which all traces of subjectivity

have been erased (see also Carter, 1999;

Burnett, 2000:67-117; Driver & Martins, 2002).

In considering the visualisation of the

tropical world during this period, the figure of

Alexander von Humboldt looms large, not least

because of his influence on subsequent

generations of naturalists and artists across

Europe and the Americas. The aesthetic

depiction of landscape was an integral part of

Humboldts philosophy; and it was of

particular significance in his representations

of the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics. For

Humboldt, the tropical world was a privileged

site, where the true variation and order of

nature could be observed in all its majesty

(Nicholson, 1990; Dettelbach, 1996). His lyricaldescriptions of tropical landscape left their

mark on those who travelled in his wake. In

April 1832, for example, Charles Darwin wrote

of his first sight (near Rio de Janeiro) of what

he called a tropical forest in all its sublime

grandeur, as if the scene demanded such a

response from any truly philosophical traveller.

I formerly admired Humboldt, I now almost

adore him; he alone gives any notion of the

feelings which are raised in the mind of firstentering the Tropics (Darwin, cited in

Cannon, 1978:87; see also Martins, 2000).

Humboldts significance in this context is clear.

For those aspiring to the status of the truly

philosophical naturalist, as opposed to what

they regarded as the mere surveyor or collector,

the view had to be framed by a wider vision.

Humboldts vision of the natural world was

essentially physiographic: hence his abiding

concerns both with the spatial distribution of

natural phenomena over the surface of the

earth, and with their visual representation,

notably in the form of his celebrated iso-maps

(Dettelbach, 1999; Godlewska, 1999). Carto-

graphy was, however, only one such means

of representation, and Humboldt also made

full use of other sorts of diagrams, tableaux,panoramas and descriptive narrative in his

depictions of landscape physiognomy in

various regions of the globe. His famous

cross-sectional landscape profile of the Andes

from the Atlantic to the Pacific, first sketched

on the spot at the foot of Mount Chimborazo

(Figure 1), was in fact a hybrid production

(Nicholson, 1990:173-78; Dettelbach, 1996:267-

72). It was intended to allow relationships

between such variables as vegetation, altitude,

topography and climate to be seen in one all-

embracing view. Combining a topographic

picture with text denoting the names of plants

typical of different altitudes, together with a

table of data in 16 columns alongside, the

image fused very different modes of repre-

sentation, creating what Nigel Leask (2002:253-

54) calls a sort of scientific hyper-text.

In some respects, Humboldts celebrated

tableau is an ingenious development ofsomething rather more commonplace in the

literature of travel and exploration during the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; that is,

the combination of graphic representations

with other kinds of data, including textual

descriptions. As Michael Bravo (1999) has

argued, the culture of precision associated

with Humboldtian science was not confined

to the use of refined instruments or numerical

data: it was also reflected in approaches toevidence in the form of narratives, maps and

visual images generally. For Humboldt, as for



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many of his contemporaries, the sketch ofnatures forms made on the spot was thus a

vital source of knowledge. In the hands of a

skilled draughtsman, it promised something

more authentic than received wisdom. If more

synoptic and philosophical visions demanded

other sorts of skill available only to the savant

in his library, they nonetheless depended

ultimately on the accurate rendering of the

view in the field. In the remainder of this paper,

I shall consider the making of such views by

the hands of two exemplary figures, both of

whom travelled extensively within the tropical

world in the opening decades of the nineteenth

century. These vignettes are drawn from my

current research with Luciana Martins on the

image-making of naturalists and navigators

during this period (Driver & Martins, 2002;

Martins & Driver, 2005).

Natural history: Burchell and his

specimensIn 1826, having travelled for 14 months in

Brazil, William Burchell (1782-1863) wrote to a

fellow naturalist about the botanical richesof tropical nature. Its luxuriance defied even

his expectations as an experienced traveller

so much so, indeed, that he was tempted to

turn from Natural History to Painting.2The

sentiment was entirely proper for a

Humboldtian; and in Burchells case, it was

no mere flight of fancy. His education had

included classes in landscape drawing with

Merigot, a French migr in London, and by

the time of his journey to Brazil he was already

an accomplished artist. During a period of 15

years spent working as a naturalist in St.

Helena, Southern Africa and Brazil, Burchell

used his considerable skills as a draughtsman,

in tandem with his scientific expertise, to

document the features of landscapes, peoples,

flora and fauna. He also collected a large

number of botanical, zoological and geological

specimens, which were packed up for transport

back to England.

If Burchell can be treated as an exemplary

figure, it is because his work so clearly

Figure 1. Alexander von Humboldt, Gographie des plantes prs de lEquadeur, 1803,

ink and watercolour on paper. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional de Colombia,

Bogot, Colombia.

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illustrates the connections between new

paradigms of natural history, cultures of

collecting and the graphic depiction of

specimens. Consider for a moment how the

naturalists knowledge actually travels. How

was information about distant places to begathered? What forms should observation

take? By what means was it made available to

metropolitan science? How could its credibility

be assured? One of the prime ways in which

the knowledge of travelling naturalists could

be trusted, according to the rhetor ic of

Banksian natural history, was through the

precise recording of information in a manner

laid down by metropolitan scientific

institutions: most commonly, through the useof appropriate instruments, techniques of

observation, collection and inscription (Driver,

2001). Hence the proliferation of instruction

manuals for botanical and zoological collectors

emphasising the importance of recording

perishable data in words and sketches made

on the spot. In her study of early nineteenth-

century British zoology, Anne Larsen (1993)

distinguishes between two categories of such

data: that relating to the form of a living being,

such as colour, shape, and habits, and that

concerning its context, that is, where it was

located and the characteristics of its natural

habitat. As she contends, the

detailed examination of landscapes was

one of the most fundamental aspects

of natural history; instruction manuals

usually taught their readers how to see,

gather and record objects that conveyed

a sense of an areas particular naturalfeatures and characteristics (Larsen,

1993:198).

To put instructions into practice, however, was

not so simple. Apart from an abundance of

time for collecting and drawing are both time-

consuming activities sketching also required

well-trained hands and eyes.

What we witness from the mid-eighteenthcentury, then, is the refinement of a whole

methodology of field observation, designed

to ensure that reliable and unvarnished

information could be collected, stored and

eventually transmitted back to the centre. Such

a model of observation is securely represented

in Burchells portrait of his wagon, in which

he travelled across southern Africa in 1810-15(Figure 2). Though Burchells African journey

was not quite tropical in the cartographic

sense, I have argued elsewhere that this small

watercolour sketch does faithfully represent

key aspects of the practice of Humboldtian

natural history (Driver, 2001:17-19). Most

obviously, it is crammed with instruments of

all kinds compass, telescope, thermometer,

weighing scales, maps, specimen cases, plant

press and pistols as well as botanical andzoological specimens, ethnographic portraits,

flag, hammock and flute. And of course

plentiful drawing materials. The first volume

of Burchells (1822:108-11, 118-20) Travels in

the Interior of Southern Africa includes a

painstaking description of the design of the

vehicle, which was adapted from the standard

Cape ox-wagon. The wagon effectively

functioned both as a mobile laboratory and as

an instrument itself, the rotations of its wheels

providing a means of calculating the distances

travelled. In fact, Burchell regarded his mobile

home as the most perfectly designed of any of

his instruments, and this is presumably why

he painstakingly composed this intimate

portrait.3 On the one hand, the wagon was

literally a vehicle for the pursuit of

metropolitan science; on the other hand, its

disarticulated construction was also well

adapted to the uneven terrain. Global functions,

as it were, calibrated to local conditions.

Burchells commitment to accuracy in

recording information in graphic, textual and

numerical form is striking. Typically, he made

a precise record of the time it took to complete

the watercolour sketch of his wagon (120

hours), just as he did when arranging and

labelling his botanical and zoological

specimens (Poulton, 1907:40). Burchells

abilities as a draughtsman are just as evidentin his depictions of the forms of tropical nature

within his St Helena sketchbook. Amongst



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Figure 2. William J. Burchell, Inside of my African Waggon, 1820, watercolour. Courtesy

of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, United Kingdom (UK).

Figure 3. William J. Burchell, A group of plantains from nature, St Helena,

20 February, 1807. Courtesy of the Royal Botanic Gardens Archives, Kew, UK.

8 Driver


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numerous profiles of the island drawn from

the sea, there are several landscapes and

detailed drawings of natural history

specimens. One of these deserves attention

in the present context (Figure 3). This is a small

but remarkable sketch entitled A Group ofPlantains from Nature, dated 20 February

1807. Upon this drawing are drops of the

plantains own juice which have fallen on the

page, whether by accident or design. As

Luciana Martins and I have argued, these

drops are themselves used as a sort of

evidence not blood but drops of Plantain

juice, writes Burchell in pencil on his sketch.

In this way, the visual image becomes

something more than mere representation:stained red by the specimen itself, the very

scrap of paper itself acquires scientific value.

No longer just an illustration, Burchells

sketch provides confirmation by proxy of the

authentic presence of the observer in the field,

thereby affirming his credibility as a faithful

witness (Martins & Driver, 2005).

As with many travelling naturalists,

Burchells vision of the tropical world was

activated by the drive to collect and to label,

to preserve what could be seen on the spot in

order to transmit knowledge at a distance. In

his case too, drawing and sketching came to

play a key role in the accurate rendering of the

forms of nature as well as human landscapes.

(Burchell, like Humboldt in fact, was keenly

interested in panoramas, and executed a large

panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro during his

stay in the city; see Martins, 2001.) He regarded

his sketches of natural forms, landscapes aswell as botanical specimens, as more than

accurate representations: they also constituted

material evidence in themselves, specimens by

proxy. In describing Burchell as exemplary,

however, I also mean to draw attention to his

failures as well as his achievements: in

particular, to his inability to master his vast

collections. His mania for collecting was

extraordinary, and he spent much of the last

35 years of his life trying to comprehend theresults: for example, it took him three years to

unpack and rearrange the 49,000 botanical

specimens gathered in his five-year journey

through Brazil, and he spent four more years

relabelling them (Poulton, 1907:54). In later life,

Burchell complained constantly of lack of

space and time, his frustrations at what he

perceived as a lack of official support, and thesheer scale of the task he had set himself. In

contrast to his work in South Africa, he failed

to publish anything of his travels in tropical

Brazil.

Navigation: Roe and his logbooks

For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, the art of navigation, no less than

that of natural history, depended on the ability

to compose and to recognise an accurate

sketch from nature. The visual archive of

tropical travel is heavily stocked with charts,

sketches and more finished landscapes

produced by naval officers and midshipmen.

The history represented in this archive is

perhaps less heroic and more mundane than

that of the more philosophical naturalists in

search of new worlds, or even the travelling

artists seeking their fortunes from the making

of exotic views: the Navy is not, after all, the

pl ace where you would expec t to fi ndvisionaries. And yet perhaps this story

deserves more attention from historians of

geography, especially given the role of naval

officers and Admiralty officials in the

foundation of the Royal Geographical Society

in 1830 (Driver, 2001:24-48). In the early

nineteenth century, in contrast with later

periods, servicemen were at the forefront of

earth science in a number of respects: indeed,

they were active in some of the most avant-garde scientific programmes of the period, from

astronomy to terrestrial magnetism.

As in the discussion of natural history, my

concern in this second vignette is with the

epistemology and aesthetics of sketching. The

ability to render accurately the dimensions,

detail and colour of coastal scenery was a vital

element in the art of navigation and charting.

To recognise and to reproduce coastlines wasan essential aspect of the surveyors task,

providing a record of the ships voyage and



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Figure 5. John Septimus Roe, Views of the coastline between Cabo Frio and Rio de Janeiro,

May 1817. Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.

Figure 4. John Septimus Roe, Views of the Sugar Loaf, Rio de Janeiro, June 1817, from the

logbook of the transport Dick. Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia,

Perth, Australia.

10 Driver


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enabling others to follow in its tracks. The

coastal view was thus an integral component

of maritime charts and logbooks, part of a

common visual code rendering the maritime

world intelligible to navigators (Martins, 1999).

Consider, for example, the images in Figures 4and 5, drawn from a logbook kept by mid-

shipman John Septimus Roe (1797-1878) on a

voyage from England to New South Wales in

1817 (Driver & Martins, 2002:145, 156). They

depict the topography of the Sugar Loaf and

adjacent features at Rio de Janeiro, a common

port of call for British ships bound for South

Africa, India, China and Australia during this

period . In some respects , these images

represent a way of seeing the tropical worldfrom the point of view of the British coastal

surveyor, part of a much wider network,

coordinated from the Admiralty, through which

the maritime empire, whether formal or informal,

was secured. More particularly, these images

reflect Roes training (as a would-be midship-

man) in the arts of drawing and mapping at

Christs Hospital (London), and the subsequent

development of his technique at sea. The

logbook itself, of course, had a key role to play

in both the practice of navigation and the

politics of naval discipline. Its page layout in a

sense mirrored the strict spatial organisation

of the ship: every little bit of information had

its proper place, the entries designed to make

optimum use of the available space.

But these images also had other functions.

They could also express more personal

aspirations, in so far as drawing like writing

could provide a means of self-advancement.Several of Roes logbooks, which today are

held in the State Library of Western Australia

(Perth), are immaculately produced, including

ornate frontispieces clearly designed to

impress his superiors and his relatives (Driver

& Martins, 2002:152). From his letters home to

his family, which also survive, it is clear that

the logbooks and charts provided an

opportunity to develop his skills as a

draughtsman, in a context of intensecompetition for naval posts in the post-1815

era. From 1817, Roe worked under the

supervision of Phillip Parker King, who had

been given the task of undertaking a coastal

survey of tropical Australia. The Admiralty

had specifically instructed him to supervise

Roes drawing and colour-washing on the

journey out (Hordern, 1997:24-26). Thephysical labour of drawing, mapping and

sketching is painfully visible in Roes

correspondence. Indeed, throughout his early

naval career, he never ceased to lament the

effect of constant observation, sketching and

drawing on his overworked eyes. In December

1818, writing from Port Jackson, he

complained:

My sight has been so much impairedby constantly looking out, since my

being employed in this service, that I

now find it difficult to distinguish

objects plainly without the aid of a

glass.4

It seems that, together with his books and

drawing instruments, Roes most precious

possession was the eye-water made up to his

mothers recipe. What he called the heat and

glare of tropical climes,5 as well as the

countless hours spent confined in candle-lit

cabins preparing his charts, would strain even

the most imperial eye.

Roes sketches, then, served a number of

purposes. Seen from the perspective of the

Admiralty in London, they provided more or

less reliable descriptions of the shape of

coastlines, within and beyond the tropics.

Seen from on board ship, they appear not onlyas laborious experiments in a way of seeing,

but also as the far from certain means of an

attempt to secure a place in the world. In

comparison with Burchell, John Septimus Roe

began his career a lowly figure, without a

private income to support his ventures in

science and survey; but he did eventually

secure a position for himself as a colonial

surveyor in Western Australia. Years later, in

his letter of retirement (cited in Jackson,1982:166), Roe impassively recorded the

physical effects of his labours on behalf of



12/17

the imperial state, in a manner which speaks

volumes for the ways in which such service

was performed:

whilst actively employed in the Publicservice the sight in one eye has been

completely destroyed, that of the other

eye very much damaged, the head has

twice been severely injured, as also the

left hand, and incurable hernia has been

contracted whilst forcing [sic] almost

impenetrable country.

Roe was no doubt seeking further reward for

services rendered; but his letter also reminds

us that there was nothing disembodied about

the work of colonial survey (Carter, 1987;

Driver & Martins, 2002).

REFLECTIONS ON THE VISUAL

What can we make of these stories of image-

making in the tropics? My aim here has been

to investigate the ways in which images may

be crafted as tools of knowledge, ways of

apprehending the world in this case, the

tropical world. There is a wider point too. In

treating the subject of visual images and their

role in the production of geographical

knowledge, we do not have to choose between

representation and practice or performance,

as some recent claims for non-represen-

tational theory tend to suggest. Here we have

been concerned with a specific practice of

image-making, namely the art of drawing, and

its application in the production andcirculation of bodies of knowledge like natural

history and navigation. In these contexts,

image-making was clearly a highly regulated

affair involving the deployment of certain

conventions and skills, as well as being

embodied and performed in various ways.

The visual images considered in this paper

have been images of a particular kind: often,

they are sketches made from nature. As Martin

Rudwick (2000) has recently argued in a

notable essay on Georges Cuviers (1769-1832)

paper museum of fossil bones in the Paris

Museum of Natural History, this sort of sketch

may be understood as a kind of proxy specimen,

the embodiment of evidence seen and recorded

in the field, destined in principle to be brought

back and fi tted in to a wider archive ofknowledge. This at least was the epistemology

of drawing as it was described in contemporary

manuals of natural history and navigation:

observation meant inscription and depiction

on the spot, trusting nothing to memory. In

practice, of course, these images cannot simply

be regarded as unvarnished originals, snap-

shots of the scenes they were supposed to

witness. Roes sketches, for example, were

composed according to conventional rules: but

they were worked and reworked, ultimately

serving as crucial resources for his own self-

fashioning. Burchells drawings were similarly

intended to be fitted within a system, partly of

his own making, and they too were worked and

reworked. Such images were certainly mobile,

but as Rudwick (2000) also shows they were

not immutable, even in this form. Today, in fact,

these images continue to have a life of their

own, though they are likely to be valued more

highly in the auction room than in thelaboratory.

There is a more specific point here about

the status of the finished image, notably in

the context of landscape art. Oil paintings of

tropical landscape by artists such as Johann

Moritz Rugendas (1802-58) and Frederic Edwin

Church (1826-1900), inspired by Humboldts

sublime vision, had a major impact in Europe

and North America during the nineteenthcentury (Manthorne, 1989; Diener & Costa,

2002). The iconography of tropicality relied

on the recognition of typical or emblematic

landscape forms, so that certain visions could

transcend the particularities of the view and

stand in for aspects of tropical nature as a

whole, most notably of course the tropical

forest scene. There is room here for further

research on the geographies at work in this

process of circulation of ideas and images, as

well as people, plants and resources, through

the inter-tropical zone. Writing about Indias

place in the tropical world, for example, David

12 Driver


13/17

Arnold (1998:6-9) has noted what he calls an

important piece of intra-tropical semantic

exchange: while the term hurricane travelled

from the Caribbean to the East Indies, the word

jungle, which originated as a Sanskrit term

meaning waste or uncultivated ground, came

to signify dense, damp forests throughout the

tropical world.6Such exchanges have their

visual equivalents: thus, the tropical forestsof the Americas, as described by Humboldt,

were imaginatively transported to the old world

by European travellers. Alternatively, the

scenery of the Orient could be mapped onto

the topography of Rio de Janeiro, as in the

case of Figure 6, a pencil drawing by another

midshipman (discussed in Martins, 1999). This

delicate sketch, which bears the traces of the

experience of travelling across the globe in

the early nineteenth century, provides yetanother instance of that history of exchanges

of worlds described by Lucien Febvre in 1948.

EMPIRE AND DISTURBANCE

Nicholas Thomas has recently questioned the

emphasis place on imperial designs in much

work on the history of cultural encounters. It

has become increasingly evident, Thomas

(1999:2-3) argues,

that the present range of approachesexaggerates and reinscribes precisely

those western hegemonies they wishfully

challenge The tendency is to insist

upon the will to dominate in imperial

culture, science, and vision, without

investigating the ways in which the

apparatuses of colonialism and modernity

have been compromised locally.

The argument here is not of course thatempire is unimportant, but rather that its

effects were not always predictable or

Figure 6. Charles William Browne, Sugar Loaf and Cockovado [sic] from the sea, c.1818.

Courtesy of the Geyer collection, Museu Imperial, Petrpolis, Brazil.



14/17

contained. In this spirit, I have been parti-

cularly concerned in my work to explore the

ways in which images of tropical nature may

reflect, or translate, the experience of travel,

its disappointments as well as its successes(further developed in Driver, 2004).

We have heard much in recent writing

about the sheer ambition of the naturalists,

navigators and explorers who sought to

make the world an orderly place in the name

of enlightenment during the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries (Stafford, 1989; Miller

& Reill, 1996; Edney, 1997; Drayton, 2000).

These world-makers imagined the creation

of vast archives of texts, images, artefacts

and specimens, patiently assembled,

through which the geography of the earth

could be made known. They created great

empires of learning, presided over in Britain

by such influential figures as the naturalist

Joseph Banks, the geographer-geologist

Roderick Murchison and the botanist

Joseph Hooker, whose networks extended

the reach of power and knowledge across

every continent and every sea. Theirs was asuitably imperial vision, of order, system and

progress, in which the scientific travellers

role was to fill in the blanks: the keepers of

the imperial archive would do the rest.

If we look more closely at the archive of

tropical travel, however, it is clear that such

projects raised as many questions as they

answered. How was the experience of

travelling itself to be put into words andimages? To what extent did the encounter

with difference, in nature and culture,

undermine or affirm existing conventions?

Such questions as these were addressed

long ago in Bernard Smiths (1985) seminal

work on the impact of the Pacific voyages

on the development of European scientific

theories and landscape art, first published

in 1960. IfEuropean Vision and the South

Pacific remains an inspiration today, it is

part ly because of it s concerns wi th the

epistemological status of image-making in

what ways, precisely, can seeing be the

equivalent of knowing? and partly because

in its treatment of the history of voyaging,

the space of experience is left open.7

The archive of tropical travel yieldsevidence of something more fragile and

unpredictable alongside imperial ambition

and planetary consciousness: in a word,

disturbance. Jonathan Lamb (2001:7),

referring to eighteenth-century voyages of

discovery, puts the case well:

The commanders of these expeditions

may have been committed to large and

comprehensive views, and believed

devoutly in systems of classification and

cadastral measurement; but their data

proved intractable, their experiments

prone to failure, and they became peri-

odically distracted, behaving unlike

themselves owing to the stress of

isolation, disease, fear and occa-

sionally exquisite pleasure.

The more we look for it, indeed, the more the

evidence multiplies, and continues to multiply,well beyond the late eighteenth century. We

can see the signs in the more humble

experiences of both Roe and Burchell, even

though they struggled hard to insure

themselves against the disturbing effects of

tropical travel. While the imperial eye sees

the history of knowledge-making in terms of

the establishment of a more or less coherent

system or network, there are other stories, in

which knowledge is anything but settled. In

attempting to trace the outlines of these other

stories, it is sometimes better to begin with a

sketch than a vision.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper forms part of an ongoing research

project with Luciana Martins on the theme of

tropical views and visions. I am indebted to

her for allowing me to draw on some of our

joint work here. The project was supported by

the Arts and Humanities Research Board

(AHRB) of the United Kingdom.

14 Driver


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