Encyclopedia of Exploration Vol III: review (click here to return to list of reviews)
FERGUS FLEMING
At the Edge of the World
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXPLORATION 1850 TO 1940: THE OCEANS, ISLANDS AND POLAR REGIONS
By Raymond Howgego
(Hordem House, Australia 724pp AUD $245)
ACCORDING TO THE blurb Raymond Howgego speaks every European language (except Basque and Finnish) and can also handle Arabic. Of itself this is enough to pull one up. Equally arresting is the use he makes of his talent. For Howgego is, aptly, an encyclopedist; and his chosen subject is exploration. In 2003 he produced Encylopedia of Exploration to 1800, a monumental tome that was the product of fifteen years' research and filled more than a thousand pages of print. It was followed a year later by a slightly smaller doorstep covering the years 1800-1850. 'The present volume provides a little over 10,000 bibliographic citations,' he explained, 'most of which are primary sources dating from what is a relatively brief period. The number probably exceeds the total of primary travel narratives written for all time before the beginning of the nineteenth century.' There you have the scale of the project.
Now he has produced a third volume, Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940. Given that it covers an even busier period than the last, he has confined himself to 700-odd pages on 'oceans, islands and polar regions'. A fourth, companion volume containing the other bits and pieces of the globe is to come.
Like its predecessors, the latest encyclopedia is comprehensively fascinating. The time scale, however, seems odd: 1940 doesn't strike one immediately as a turning point in the history of exploration. A more obvious cut-off would be the 1920s, when the age of derring-do and eating your dogs was replaced by the less glamorous use of the internal combustion engine - when, too, the grand geographical schemes of the eighteenth century had been more or less completed. But, as the author explains, the opening of places such as Greenland, Antarctica and New Guinea was still underway. Rather than opt for a global full stop he has selected his parameters according to the current state of regional play.
The flaw in this argument is that play continued well beyond 1940. Shackleton's 1914 plan to traverse Antarctica, for example, was not realised until 1958; Annapurna, Everest, K2 and other Himalayan peaks had yet to be conquered; Francis Chichester had yet to do his bit, as had a host of marine explorers and aviators. It was 1998 before Bertrand Piccard made the first circumnavigation by balloon, and 2003 before Pen Hadow became the first person to walk solo from Canada to the North Pole. The year 1940 was, however, a cultural and geopolitical watershed. One must assume, therefore, that it has been chosen in anticipation of a fifth (and maybe sixth) volume to cover the post-war period,
By venturing so far towards the modern age Howgego faces the encyclopedist's ultimate nightmare: that of classification. Unlike earlier times, when almost anybody who went to a different continent or climate zone (or, sometimes, just a different country), could consider themselves an explorer of sorts, the late nineteenth and early twentieth, century saw an explosion, in both popular and private tourism. In these circumstances, where one person's odyssey is another's old bat, it is hard to draw a line between exploration and 'mere' travel, Howgego avoids the problem by not drawing a fine - or, at least, by placing it very faintly on the horizon. Practically everyone who didn't take a Thomas Cook tour seems to be here. In a rare moment of uncertainty he admits that, 'There are bound to be missing persons - private yachts - men, independent travellers and their like - who, despite the most extensive research, have eluded the author.' Possibly there are but I wouldn't bet on it. When he speaks of extensive research he means it.
The first thing that strikes one on opening Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940 is the daunting number of books that have been consulted. Take at random the entry for Wijnand Nicuwenkamp, a Dutch illustrator who worked in Indonesia. More than thirty books are cited under his name. Then there are James Sibree,the English missionary in Madagascar (twenty-one books), Eduard Toil, the Estonian geologist (seven), George Train, the US businessman and traveller (twenty-five). As for Paul-Emile Victor, the French ethnologist, he rates a reading list of fifty. When it comes to people we have heard of, such as Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton, the tally is endless.
The result is a work of scholarship whose dry title belies the wit within. It contains not just a list of names, dates and places but a collection of biographical essays that offer intriguing nuggets of information. Of Carsten Borchgrevink's 1898-1900 expedition to Antarctica, for example, we learn that Sir Clements Markham, President of the Royal Geographical Society, detested him so much that he warned his Fellows that the man 'was incompetent, his ship was rotten, and that no self-respecting member of the scientific community should have anything to do with him'. As for the Japanese polar explorer Nobu Shirase (Antarctica, 1910-12), he spent the rest of his life paying off the expedition's debts before dying in 1946 of a blocked intestine, 'in a rented room on the second floor of Suzuki's Fish Shop at Koromo, Nishikamo county in Aichi prefecture, now known as Toyota City'. It's quirky details like these that make it more than your average reference book.
Howgego's encyclopedias are something of a phenomenon. His Sydney publishers, Hordern House, have bucked every commercial trend by producing well-bound, beautiful books that are printed to the highest standard and built to last. They are the kind of book one wants not just to read but to own. The drawback is that they cost more than a hundred pounds apiece and aren't available on the High Street. Never mind. Search, the Web. Get them. Anyone interested in the history of the planet should have them on their shelves.
Literary Review March 2008