Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Mrs Seacole Prescribes Hybridity: Climate and the Victorian Mixed-race Subject
- 2 Mapping Miasma, Containing Fear: Richard Burton in West Africa
- 3 Africanus Horton and the Climate of African Nationalism
- 4 ‘Climate proof’: Mary Kingsley and the Health of Women Travellers
- 5 ‘Self rather seedy’: Conrad's Colonial Pathographies
- Conclusion: The Afterlife of Climate
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Mrs Seacole Prescribes Hybridity: Climate and the Victorian Mixed-race Subject
- 2 Mapping Miasma, Containing Fear: Richard Burton in West Africa
- 3 Africanus Horton and the Climate of African Nationalism
- 4 ‘Climate proof’: Mary Kingsley and the Health of Women Travellers
- 5 ‘Self rather seedy’: Conrad's Colonial Pathographies
- Conclusion: The Afterlife of Climate
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The ‘Contact Zones’ of Climate
Fatal Africa! One after another, travellers drop away. It is such a huge continent, and each of its secrets is environed by so many difficulties, – the torrid heat, the miasma exhaled from the soil, the noisome vapors enveloping every path, the giant cane-grass suffocating the wayfarer, the rabid fury of the native guarding every entry and exit, the unspeakable misery of life within the wild continent, the utter absence of every comfort, the bitterness which each day heaps upon the poor white man's head, in that land of blackness, the sombrous solemnity pervading every feature of it, and the little – too little – promise of success one feels on entering it. But never mind, I will try it! (Stanley 1909: 296–7)
Henry Morton Stanley sought to restore his honour by revisiting Africa in 1874, after doubts arose about his discovery of the ‘lost’ David Livingstone. The foregoing meditation on ‘Fatal Africa!’, inspired by Livingstone's death, concludes with Stanley's renewed commitment to carry on the great ‘work’ of African exploration. The passage illustrates Stanley's bravery in endeavouring to ‘enter’ Africa and discover its ‘secrets’. The furious native is only one of the many challenges Stanley expects to face – all the rest stem from the African environment. According to the theory that influences of the environment can lead to disease, the ‘torrid heat’, ‘miasma exhaled from the soil’, ‘noisome vapors’ and ‘giant cane-grass’ are not only annoying but threatening and potentially fatal to the intrepid explorer. If one's body was predisposed to illness due to intemperance, anxiety or constitutional weakness, Stanley and many of his contemporaries believed that any subsequent challenge of climate could cause heatstroke, malaria or other ‘tropical’ diseases. Stanley's characterisation of climate may be paraphrased thus: ‘the African environment is fatal for many whites, but I am man enough to make the attempt’. This passage is a retrospective addition to his autobiography. In the original narrative of his 1874 travels, Through the Dark Continent (1878), Stanley simply states that the news of Livingstone death ‘fire[s]’ him with ‘resolution’ to complete Livingstone's ‘work’ and to be, ‘if God willed it, the next martyr to geographical science’ (1878: 1).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Exploring Victorian Travel LiteratureDisease, Race and Climate, pp. 1 - 25Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014