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Masters of All They Surveyed
D. Graham Burnett
其他書名
Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado
出版
University of Chicago Press
, 2000
主題
History / General
History / Europe / Great Britain / General
History / Latin America / South America
History / Expeditions & Discoveries
Science / General
Science / Earth Sciences / Geography
Science / History
Technology & Engineering / Cartography
Travel / Central America
ISBN
0226081214
9780226081212
URL
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=CLNJkVbYMP8C&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBook
SAMPLE
註釋
Chronicling the British pursuit of the legendary El Dorado,
Masters of All They Surveyed
tells the fascinating story of geography, cartography, and scientific exploration in Britain's unique South American colony, Guyana. How did nineteenth-century Europeans turn areas they called terra incognita into bounded colonial territories? How did a tender-footed gentleman, predisposed to seasickness (and unable to swim), make his way up churning rivers into thick jungle, arid savanna, and forbidding mountain ranges, survive for the better part of a decade, and emerge with a map? What did that map mean?
In answering these questions, D. Graham Burnett brings to light the work of several such explorers, particularly Sir Robert H. Schomburgk, the man who claimed to be the first to reach the site of Ralegh's El Dorado. Commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society and later by the British Crown, Schomburgk explored and mapped regions in modern Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana, always in close contact with Amerindian communities. Drawing heavily on the maps, reports, and letters that Schomburgk sent back to England, and especially on the luxuriant images of survey landmarks in his
Twelve Views in the Interior of Guiana
(reproduced in color in this book), Burnett shows how a vast network of traverse surveys, illustrations, and travel narratives not only laid out the official boundaries of British Guiana but also marked out a symbolic landscape that fired the British imperial imagination.
Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated,
Masters of All They Surveyed
will interest anyone who wants to understand the histories of colonialism and science.