History of European Exploration HIS
Mondays, 2-4.40, RRL 362
Instructor: Dorinda Outram, [email protected]
Office hours Mondays and Thursdays 11-12.
This course counts towards Clusters in Global History, History of Science, and European History.
It concentrates on the second heroic age of European exploration in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. It is focused on the opening up og the Pacific world and of the American
West, and also examines thematic issues such as scientific travel and contact between cultures.
It was exploration which laid the foundations for the modern global world. Europeans
circumnavigated the globe, encountered strange peoples and cultures, made collections,
observations and maps, and set up markets and trade routes
Course organization
Each class consists of discussion of the week’s reading. Each student is asked to contribute two
‘think-pieces’ on the reading for each week. From the think-pieces I expect critical engagement
with the week’s reading.
Time is set aside for students to meet individually with Prof. Outram to discuss their draft midterm (10 pp.) and term papers. (20pp.) There is no final test.
Evaluation: Mid-term 25%, final exam 35%, ‘think-pieces’ 20%, discussion participation 20%.
Course Outline:
1. January 27, Introductory lecture and class organization. For next time, read:
2. February 3 D. Outram, ‘On Being Perseus: New Knowledge, Dislocation, and
Enlightenment Exploration in Livingstone and Withers, 281-294; Armesto, chapters 1-6.
3. February 10. Captain Cook’s First Voyage in Edwards, ed. The Journals of Captain Cook;
Salmond, Trial of the Cannibal Dog 1-164
4. February 17. Captain Cook’s second voyage in Edwards; Salmond 165-292
5. February 24. Captain Cook’s third Voyage in Edwards; Salmond, 293-432
6. March 3 Individual Sessions
7. March 10: Spring Break, no class
8. March 17 Culture Contact: Lamb, Part I; Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 1-15
(on Blackboard); Alan Frost. ‘New South Wales as Terra Nullius: The British Denial of
Aboriginal Land Right’, Historical Journal, 1973, 517-23 (on Blackboard)
9. March 24 Exploration and Science: Alan Frost, “The Antipodean Exchange: European
Horticulture and Imperial Designs, in Visions of Empire, eds., B.P. Miller and P.H. Reill,
58-79 (on Blackboard)
10. 31 March, Scientific Travel. Mary Terrall, ‘Mathematics in Narratives of Geodetic
Expeditions,’ Isis, 97 (2006), 683-699; Stuart McCook “It may be truth but it is not
evidence”: Paul du Chaillu and the Legitimation of Evidence in the Field Sciences’,Osiris
11 (1996), 177-97 (on Blackboard)
11. April7 : Alexander von Humboldt: Science, Ethnography and Culture Contact: Humboldt,
Personal Narrative
12. April 14: Lewis and Clark and the American West: Lewis and Clark, Journal; Thomas P.
Slaughter, Exploring Lewis and Clark.
13. April 21: Maps. Visit to Map Collection, Rare Books Library in RRL; Barbara Belyea,
‘Amerindian Maps: The Explorer as Translator, Osiris (1992), 267-77; Godlewska and
Edney in Livingstone and Withers
14. April 28 Individual Appointments with Prof Outram
15. DUE Dates: mid-term paper due March 17 to be handed IN IN CLASS; Term Ppaer Due
Date, May 5