The European Antarctic
Subtitle: science and strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire
By: Peder Roberts
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Palgrave studies in cultural and intellectual history
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 266
ISBN-13: 9780230115910
Subjects: Swedish; HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century; Scientific expeditions; HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain; HISTORY / Europe / Scandinavia; British; Norwegian; HISTORY / Social History; Discovery and exploration; SCIENCE / History; History
Description: "This is the first transnational study of British, Norwegian, and Swedish engagement with the Antarctic, from the years before the Great War to the early years of the Cold War. Rather than charting how Europeans unveiled the Antarctic, it uses the history of Antarctic activity as a window into the political and cultural worlds of twentieth-century Britain and Scandinavia. Science was a resource for states attempting to reveal - and control - the Antarctic and its resources. But it was also a source of personal and institutional capital, a means of earning civic status and professional advancement. The book ranges from the politics of whaling management to the changing value of geographical exploration in the academy and the rise of specialized, state-sponsored research, presenting an episodic rather than a linear narrative focused on historically specific networks and strategies. Drawing upon scholarship in critical geopolitics, imperial environmental history, and the cultural history of science, author Peder Roberts argues that despite its splendid geographical isolation, the Antarctic was a field for distinctly local European dreams"--
Notes: Bibliography: p. 235-254 and index.