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By the middle of the nineteenth century, the North-West Passage, a trade route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had been sought for centuries without success. The Franklin expedition of 1845 became the latest victim, and Irish naval officer Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure (1807-73) took part in the attempts to ascertain its fate. His ship, H.M.S. Investigator, spent the years 1850-4 in the Arctic, and in the course of their search for the lost expedition, the crew discovered the North-West...

In 1836, the French King Louis-Philippe, enthusiastic for Southern Hemisphere exploration, supported J. Dumont d'Urville's plan for a circumnavigation focusing on the South Seas. D'Urville (1790-1842) had already distinguished himself on two Pacific expeditions and was eager to rival the achievements of James Cook. Between 1837 and 1840, the ships Astrolabe and Zelee explored the waters of the Antarctic area and Oceania in extremely harsh conditions: almost forty crew members died or deserted. H...

This important but neglected book shows the reader how farming practices, and the care - or lack of care - with which the soil is treated have brought about both the rise and fall of civilizations, from the ancient Romans, to the Chinese, and the Muslim world. Soil is at the heart of civilization. This is a fully re-edited version of this classic and important text. - Introduction - Rome - The Roman Foods - The Roman Family - Soil Erosion in ancient Rome - Farmers and Nomads - Contrasting P...

This edited collection explores how narratives about the future of the Arctic have been produced historically up until the present day. The contemporary deterministic and monolithic narrative is shown to be only one of several possible ways forward. This book problematizes the dominant prediction that there will be increased shipping and resource extraction as the ice melts and shows how this seemingly inevitable future has consequences for the action that can be taken in the present. This col...

The Lake District was a popular tourist destination in the mid-Victorian period, and the changes it underwent following the arrival of the railway called for a new guide. Harriet Martineau (1802-76), a prolific and skilled writer on a wide variety of subjects, who had elsewhere written extensively to campaign for women's rights and against slavery in America, published this guide in 1858, having moved to the area. It offers a vivid insight into what is to be expected of a typical Victorian walki...

Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920), the distinguished American Arctic explorer, is usually credited as the first person to have reached the geographic North Pole, in 1909. First published in 1898, this two-volume work recounts Peary's expeditions across the interior ice-cap of Northern Greenland in the years 1886 and 1891-7. It describes Peary's contacts with the local Inuit tribes and the valuable scientific discoveries he made in geography, and natural history. Peary also documents the discovery a...

First published in 1989, The Vanishing Countryman investigates how farmers, farm workers, and other country crafts- and tradespeople have fared in response to significant changes across the British countryside in the past one hundred years. The book explores the move towards large-scale and capital-intensive farming, and the conflict between increased production and damage to the environment. It looks at the decline in the number of farm workers, crafts- and tradespeople. It also considers the...

The Hebrides of Scotland - around 500 diverse islands - form the north-western Atlantic fringe of Europe. This book surveys the cultural landscape of this dramatically beautiful, complex and conflicted area, with emphasis on what may be interpreted through aerial photography. Its main themes are the mutual influences of people and environment, and the recent history and current issues in the area. Mobile maritime cultures flourished throughout the Hebrides from prehistoric times, including Mesol...

Following distinguished naval service during the Napoleonic Wars, Edward Chappell (1792-1861) took part in two voyages patrolling British fisheries in North America. The second of these, in 1814, is recounted in this journal, first published in 1817. Illustrated with several engravings, Chappell's narrative dwells in particular upon the Inuit, who were little understood by Europeans at the time. Knowing only a few Inuit words, Chappell traded with them and was admitted to their homes. Though som...

People have designed cities long before there were urban designers. In Shapers of Urban Form, Peter Larkham and Michael Conzen have commissioned new scholarship on the forces, people, and institutions that have shaped cities from the Middle Ages to the present day. Larkham and Conzen collect new essays in "urban morphology," the people-centered predecessor to contemporary theories of top-down urban design. Shapers of Urban Form focuses on the social processes that create patterns of urban form...

Sir Clements R. Markham (1830-1916) had succumbed to smoke after accidentally igniting his bedclothes while reading by candlelight; the task of completing this history therefore fell to his friend and fellow geographer F. H. H. Guillemard (1852-1933), who published it in 1921. In the course of his long career, Markham had sailed to the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin, jeopardised his job in the India Office by joining the British attempt to reach the North Pole in 1875-6, and served as pre...

The diplomat and M.P. William Hamilton (1805-67) was also a keen geologist and a protege of Sir Roderick Murchison. In 1835 he set off with a companion for the eastern Mediterranean, visiting the Ionian Islands, the Bosphorus and the volcanic area called the Katakekaumene. Hamilton then continued alone on horseback through Armenia and Asia Minor before returning to Smyrna (Izmir). Having already published some of his notes as papers for the Geological Society, he published this two-volume accoun...

In 1836, the French King Louis-Philippe, enthusiastic for Southern Hemisphere exploration, supported J. Dumont d'Urville's plan for a circumnavigation focusing on the South Seas. D'Urville (1790-1842) had already distinguished himself on two Pacific expeditions and was eager to rival the achievements of James Cook. Between 1837 and 1840, the ships Astrolabe and Zelee explored the waters of the Antarctic area and Oceania in extremely harsh conditions: almost forty crew members died or deserted. H...

Second World War British Military Camouflage offers an original approach to the cultures and geographies of military conflict, through a study of the history of camouflage. Isla Forsyth narrates the scientific biography of Dr Hugh Cott (1900-1987), eminent zoologist and artist turned camoufleur, and entwines this with the lives of other camouflage practitioners, to trace the sites of camouflage's developments. Moving through the scientists' fieldsite, the committee boardroom, the military trai...