Exploration History and Identity Construction

Cultural approaches to exploration history became more prominent over a generation ago. While the field is too vast to document, here are two recent examples: The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, which has an entire section (comprised of 13 chapters) entitled “Imagined Geographies.” Utilizing phrases like “culturally-mediated . . . associations” and “cultural baggage” when explaining the content of the section, editor Carl Thompson emphasizes the centrality of culture. The second example: the forthcoming 6-volume A Cultural History of Exploration, edited by former TI Editor Lauren Beck and Fabio López Lázaro, prominently highlights culture in the title and the content (e.g., each of the chronologically organized volumes will have thematic chapters that examine ways the exploration was represented in texts and images). Identity is a sub-theme within the cultural history of exploration. Rather than employing a single approach, scholars have analyzed identity construction in exploration history in a wide range of ways. Furthermore, the identities that scholars have focused on has varied too. Let me briefly mention some trends in the scholarship (it is beyond the scope of this introduction to provide a comprehensive overview). One trend has been to focus on the impact that the enterprise of exploration had on the identity of the nation that sponsored it. Scholars have shown that impressive feats in exploration enhanced prestige, inspiring leaders to fund exploration expeditions to bolster their own image as well as the image of their nation. Another scholarly approach has been to focus on the ways that explorers forged identities of places and peoples they explored, a method that has focused on the ways