Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 484e497488

the UK, whilst in the USA conservationists have tended to separatehuman and non-human in order to privilege the idea of ‘wilder-ness’ and create Protected Areas fromwhich local communities aretypically excluded or even actively removed with the help of themilitary. Moreover, it is the latter model which has been far moreinfluential internationally, particularly in Africa. Despite theinclusion of both an introduction and an afterword, comparisonsbetween the chapters e most obviously between Sörlin’s andNehring’s accounts of the emergence of environmental thinking inthe second half of the twentieth century in Sweden and WestGermany, respectively e are by and large left for the reader todraw out.

Whilst most of the chapters in the book focus on the modernera, mainly charting the emergence of ideas and concepts since thelate nineteenth century, four authors offer valuable longue duréeperspectives on environmental issues. Tim Cooper’s chapterprovides an excellent introduction to the meaning and manage-ment of waste e including animal excrement, night soil, andindustrial by-products e in the period after 1600. As such, it couldusefully be recommended to undergraduates, postgraduates, andacademic colleagues working on a broad range of topics includingurban history, agricultural history, sustainability and environ-mental geography. Muck appears again in the chapter by PaulWarde, who argues that the new experimental husbandry whichemerged in England and Europe from the 1760s saw on-farmmanure recycling as the key to improved yields and profits. In doingso, it imagined both nature and the market as constants outside thefarmer’s control, thereby contributing to an ‘othering’ of the envi-ronment which has long held sway within agricultural history.Georgina Endfield too offers a longer historical perspective, thistime on climate events in Mexico in the three centuries before1821. She touches on the intriguing possibility that pre and post-conquest communities in Mexico adopted similar strategies e

including irrigation, the maintenance of food reserves, and region-to-region grain trading e in order to cope with seasonal droughts.

Yet the book’s contributors otherwise say very little aboutpotential continuities e or for that matter, discontinuities e in theway medieval, early modern, and modern communities thoughtabout and managed the environments which surrounded them,a theme which might have received further consideration. Thisneglect may in part stem from the fact that, as Libby Robin pointsout, the very idea of ‘wilderness’ ignores human history. Humansare, however, brought to the fore in Kirsten Hastrup’s contribution,the final essay before Burke’s afterword. Having asserted that‘environmental history is but history, because the environment isnever outside the lived world’ (p. 333), Hastrup attempts toreformulate the relationship between environment and humanhistory in a discussion which borrows from Tim Ingold’s work ontaskscapes, dwelling, and way-finding to examine populargeographical imaginations in Iceland in the period 1400e1800.Hers is an important addition to the volume and one that may beparticularly intriguing to historical and cultural geographersinterested in engaging with the work of anthropologists likeHastrup and Ingold.

Other cross-disciplinary connections run through the volume.For the editors, environmental history has the potential to acta ‘bridge builder’ between the humanities and sciences (p. 11). Bothresearch traditions are well represented within the collection, withthe authors utilising a wide variety of approaches and sources. Thechapter by Hamilton et al. offers methodological insights into theprocess of conducting interdisciplinary research, whilst Robinoutlines some of the ways that indigenous and practical farmingknowledges can be integrated alongside more scientific approachesto environmental management. Overall then, Nature’s End isa valuable and very readable contribution to a growing corpus of

literature on the history, perception and management of theenvironment.

Briony McDonaghUniversity of Nottingham, UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2010.08.015

Felix Driver and Lowri Jones, Hidden Histories of Exploration:Researching the RGS-IBG Collections. London, Royal Holloway,University of London, 2009, 64 pages, £10 paperback (publishedfor the exhibition, held at the Royal Geographical Society, 15Octobere10 December 2009).

Visitors to the Hidden Histories of Exploration exhibition at theRoyal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers)(RGS-IBG) were faced, on entry to the street-level exhibition space,with a striking floor to ceiling display of photographic portraits. Thefar wall of the room was transformed into a larger-than-life albumpage reproduced from a 1936 Everest volume from the society’scollections. The page includes a large number of black and whiteportraits of Sherpas who participated in the 1936 Everest expedi-tion. The impression created from this wall of portraits was one ofuniformity and individuation. The uniform pattern came from thegrid arrangement of numbered photographs, each of which showsthe head and shoulders of men standing squarely before thecamera. Many wear their identity discs and pose against the samebackgrounds. In this way the album recreates the bureaucraticmanagement of human resources on a major expedition. On closerinspection, however, (assisted by the scale at which the photo-graphs were reproduced in the exhibition) it was apparent thata single album page might contain multiple records of individualscaught up in, but certainly not reduced to, the history of a particularexpedition. This album page, and most of the Sherpas portrayed onit, are not widely reproduced in illustrated accounts of the historyof Everest expeditions. In fact most people know the story of theconquest of Everest through only a handful of iconic photographs offamous individuals. And yet here were scores of young Sherpas,including the interpreter Karma Paul and the young TenzingNorgay, without whom this expedition, and others before andsince, could simply not have happened. This single album page,enlarged onto the fabric of the RGS, captured completely thepowerful potential for geographical collections to illuminatepreviously overlooked histories of exploration.

The album page is reproduced as a double page spread(pp. 22e23) in Hidden Histories of Exploration: Researching the RGS-IBG Collections, the companion volume and catalogue to the exhi-bition. Written by the curators, Felix Driver and Lowri Jones, thishandsomely designed book sets out in words and beautifullyreproduced illustrations the themes and arguments of the exhibi-tion. The central premise of Hidden Histories of Exploration is thatexploration is a collective enterprise, but that its histories haveoften overlooked those behind the scenes; the local people andintermediaries who made it possible. Accounts of exploration tendto focus overwhelming attention on the heroic figure of theexplorer who is the central player on the stage. This is notsurprising given that exploration narratives are commissioned,marketed, and sold by publishers catering to the popular appetitefor stories of the heroic, individual (and often male) explorerencountering danger and adversity. However, to write histories ofexploration with regard only for this most visible of players is toignore a much more complex supporting cast and homogenise analtogether more interesting scene of actors. As the authors put it in

Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 484e497 489

their introduction: ‘We need to make room in our histories for thelocal partners, guides, porters, fixers, interpreters, traders andofficials who made journeys of exploration possible; and also thesponsors, patrons, publishers and editors who enabled accounts ofthese journeys to circulate more widely’ (p. 5). Hidden Histories ofExploration shows just howwemight accommodate the individualsand institutions that have been vital to exploration.

As the subtitle of the volume suggests, Hidden Histories ofExploration: Researching the RGS-IBG Collections is also an impor-tant attempt to explore hitherto unknown aspects of geographicalcollections, particularly those of the RGS-IBG. The exhibition e andthe space in which it was shown e are also part of the ‘Unlockingthe Archives’ project that began when the RGS merged with theIBG in 1995. Volume and exhibition show how careful and criticalhistorical investigation of RGS-IBG collections can expand the waysin which histories of geography in general might be researched,written, and opened up to new readings and new audiences.Hidden Histories, like the RGS-IBG collections it draws on, includesitems from across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries andfrom every continent. The histories of exploration, of both familiarand unfamiliar varieties, that might be illuminated by research onRGS-IBG collections are thus truly global in their scope andpotential.

After a short introduction to the exhibition and RGS-IBGcollections the authors turn to ‘The work of exploration’(pp. 11e23), in which they trace the shifting relations betweenEuropean explorers and non-European guides, interpreters, andintermediaries. Traces of indigenous peoples and agency are oftento be found in the visual records of expeditions, as is shown in thenext section, ‘The art of encounter’ (pp. 25e35), which considersa range of representations of exploration and encounter in theworkof expeditionary artists such as Thomas Baines and naval officerssuch as William Smyth. In the next section, ‘Exploration on camera’(pp. 37e41), the authors’ skilful selection of photographs anddocumentary film from the RGS-IBG’s huge collections illustratesless well known aspects of exploration including, as with the albumpage of Everest Sherpas discussed above, the essential contributionmade to expeditions by indigenous agents. Contributions of non-Europeans to exploration were not totally hidden from view inofficial narratives, and in the final section, ‘Recognition andresponsibility’, the authors consider how non-European explorerswere recognised. Devices of recognition, ranging from formalawards and medals to inclusion in official accounts, record both‘loyal followers’ and employees, such as the ‘Pundits’ of the Surveyof India, and the ‘unfaithful’ and ‘unruly’ of whom traces surviveonly because they disrupted expeditionary routines and itineraries.What responsibility European explorers bore to the people withwhom they travelled and whom they encountered was debatedeven before the RGS was established. As the authors show, casessuch as the controversy over Henry Morton Stanley’s methods ofexploration in Africa in the mid-nineteenth century show howgeographical collections represent multiple opinions on the ethicsof exploration, if only because there was no consensus on suchquestions e even at the height of European colonial confidence.

While often overlooked in narratives of exploration, non-Euro-peans were central to the success of expeditions and the survival ofEuropean explorers. As Hidden Histories shows, traces of theseguides, interpreters, and intermediaries survive, by accident andintention, across a range of material collected during expeditions.Volume and exhibition throw down an important challenge forhistorians of exploration and geographical knowledge: to findnew perspectives and materials that can illuminate explorations as‘co-productions’ (p. 11) rather than singular efforts by self-possessed, independent European heroes. The authors are careful

to stress the variety of objects in the RGS-IBG collections that mighttell new tales of exploration, including books, manuscripts, maps,paintings, engravings, film, and photographs. As they note in theirconclusion, the form of the materials makes a difference because itshapes the information contained, and reading different materialsrequires an understanding of the conventions governing theircreation and display in the past and today.

This volume captures the flavour of the exhibition excellently.Chapters bear the same titles as the exhibition themes, and highquality colour images are carefully incorporated throughout. Theauthors helpfully include detailed footnotes and a full exhibitioncatalogue (pp. 52e63) at the end of the volume. A small full-colourimage of each item, following the panel sequence in the exhibition,is presented, together with full reference information includingmeasurements, original captions, call reference number, and scannumber to help others study the objects themselves at the RGS-IBGor via on-line catalogues.

Hidden Histories of Exploration ably demonstrates how freshperspectives are opening up geographical collections to newquestions and audiences. While this volume might seem a rela-tively slim substitute for an entire exhibition, as an essentialco-production it ensures that the important messages and impli-cations of Hidden Histories will travel far.

James R. RyanUniversity of Exeter (Cornwall Campus), UK

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2010.08.004

Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire. Forced Migration in the Dutch EastIndia Company. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 340pages, £45 hardcover.

In this excellent book, Kerry Ward extends and reinterpretsa decade’s worth of scholarship on networked conceptions ofempire, demonstrating how richly productive this field remains.Ward’s ambitious, thoughtful, and thorough work will appeal toscholars concerned with the history of the Dutch East IndiaCompany, with imperial activity in the Indian Ocean, with historiesof forced migration, and with the conceptualisation of empires.

Ward argues that it was through its networks that the empire ofthe Dutch East India Company (VOC) was manifested: takentogether intersecting, mutable networks constituted ‘a sovereigntotality or imperial web’ (p. 9). Like other recent scholars ofimperial networks, Ward deploys and expands a range of sup-porting terminology (‘circuits’, ‘sub-circuits’, and ‘nodes’, amongothers), but more importantly she demonstrates that multiplelevels of analysis can be kept in productive tension: temporal andspatial; macro and micro; oceanic and territorial. In particular,Ward shows how the fluctuating fortunes of different nodes andconnections within the empire contributed to the success of theempire as a whole; she offers an account which emphasisesmutability rather than teleology; and shemanages to keep the ‘livesof ordinary individuals’ (p. 31) in sight whilst exploring theconstitution of imperial sovereignty across the Dutch East IndiaCompany’s empire.

Networks of Empire covers the entire span of the VOC’s existence,from the early seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, althoughdifferent chapters consider widely varying timescales.Geographically, the ‘primary circuit’ of the VOC’s Indian Oceanempire connecting Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope is the book’sfocus, but Ward’s analysis also extends to other parts of the