Imagining the Tropics: Views and Visions of the Tropical World

Living rock and human bird

“…Such visceral turmoil echoes the experience of colonial artists encountering 'strange' environs. This resonates with Felix Driver's (2004) notion of 'disturbance' as a lens for grasping the fragilities and struggles that unsettled imperial knowledge in the very process of making it. Driver (2004) notes the 'disturbance' to and of western bodies as they struggled with distance, other climes, disease and fatigue in the embodied production of on-thespot sketches for colonial knowledge-making in the 19th century.…”

Imperial ambivalences. Histories of lady travellers and the French explorer Octavie Renard-Coudreau (1867–1938)

“…First, she was not directly connected with a European empire, despite claiming a French identity and intellectual tradition. Second, her example provides a different viewpoint (French and Brazilian) than the AngloSaxon one, which is rather hegemonic in this literature, and contributes to the scholarship addressing tropical worlds as places of 'disturbance' for Western travellers' intellectual tools (Driver 2004). …”

Climate and colonialism

“…Geographical discussions of climate matters in the 19th and early 20th centuries were linked to issues of empire, ethnicity, and also health (Edmond, ; Jankovic, ; Livingstone, ). Moral discourses linking ethnic constitution to regional climatic characteristics (Curtin, ; Driver, ; Driver & Yeoh, ; Kennedy, ; Livingstone, ; Naraindas, ) were interwoven with theories of European acclimatization or the ability of European civilization to adapt to “alien” environments (Howell, ; Livingstone, ; Osborne, ). Certain aspects of the climate were thought to have a particularly deleterious effect on the health of Europeans.…”