This book examines British scientific and antiquarian travels in the "North," circa 17901830. British perceptions, representations and imaginings of the North are considered part of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century processes of British self-fashioning as a Northern nation, and key in unifying the expanding North Atlantic empire.

'Byrne restores the experience of Northern travels to its rightful place at the heart of European Romanticism. The reader is guided with great agility between antiquarian and ethnographic visions, traversing the liminal spaces of the North's own inhabited worlds and natural histories. At long last we have a book that provides a convincing critical analysis of the North in the formation of Britain's cultural identity.' - Michael Bravo, Head of History and Public Policy, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK

'This is a superb account of British northern travelers, demonstrating the holistic blend of the emerging sciences with the arts, literature, antiquarian interest and the taste for indigenous cultures. Angela Byrne's richly nuanced North stands out as a major projection screen for the imperial imagination, on par with the Orient or the Tropics, and as an emerging zone of cultural ideas and economic transactions foreshadowing today's interactive Arcticthat is deeply integrated in world affairs.' - Sverker Sörlin, Professor of Environmental History, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, and editor of Science, Geopolitics, and Culture in the Nordic Region

Autorentext

Angela Byrne is Lecturer in History at the University of Greenwich, UK.

Inhalt
PART I: "MOST VALUABLE AND INTERESTING TO THE SCIENCE OF OUR COUNTRY": NORTHERN EXPLORATORY TRAVELS Introduction: 'Ask Where's the North?' 1. Formative Influences and the Call of the North PART II: A LIVING POMPEII": ANTIQUARIANISM, IDENTITY, AND THE NORTH 2. An 'aboriginal district of Britain': The European North, Popular Culture, and the Search for Common Roots 3. An Intercontinental North: North Britons and Native North Americans 4. Treasures Inestimable: Collecting and Displaying the North PART III: GEOGRAPHIES OF THE NORTH 5. At the Boundary of the Temperate and Frigid Zones: The North, the Sciences, and Landscape Appreciation 6. Worlds of Knowledge, Worlds Apart?: Native and Newcomer Geographies 7. "Our Surprizing Qualifications", or, "Calculated to Make on the Minds of this Simple People a Great Impression": Interpreting Displays of Romantic Science among Northern Indigenous Communities