Mapping the Fantastic Great Southern Continent, 1760–1777: A Study in Enlightenment Geography

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between the press and the construction of ‘enlightened’ public knowledge about – and imaginaries for – the emerging south in the period 1760–1777. It analyses the construction, nature, and forms of the putative Great Southern Continent in contemporary British newspapers and magazines, and offers some suggestions for how knowledge from navigators such as James Cook was given credence in the public domain back home. It draws parallels between the ‘new media’ of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and those of the twenty-first century with their similar debates over who controls public (geographical) information, whom and how to trust, and why.