IMAGINING THE TROPICS: VIEWS AND VISIONS OF

THE TROPICAL WORLD

Felix Driver
Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Editors Note: The following is the third in the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography Lecture
Series. It was presented at a special session of the annual conference of the Royal Geographical
Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in London on 4 September 2003.

It is appropriate that a journal such as this

should periodically take stock of its raison
dtre, which in our case means reflecting upon
the multiple histories and geographies
resonating within its very title (Grundy-Warr
et al., 2003; Savage, 2003). Recent work
published in these pages has raised farreaching questions concerning the genealogy
and the spatiality of the subdiscipline of
tropical geography, most notably in relation
to contemporary concerns with colonialism,
postcolonialism, the politics of development
and fieldwork (Driver & Yeoh, 2000; Bowd &
Clayton, 2003; Sidaway et al., 2003). In the
present paper, my focus is less on the origins
and evolution of tropical geography as a
component of the modern geographical
discipline than on the history of ideas and
images of tropicality, and the role these have
played in the construction of knowledge about
the tropical world over a longer period of time.
Such issues of epistemology transcend and
in a sense precede the formation of particular
subdisciplines. To an extent, they also extend
beyond particular national research schools
and traditions. For example, that great theorist
of tropical geography, Alexander von
Humboldt (1769-1859), was a Prussian who
(following his return from his travels in the
Americas) spent the most productive years of
his long working life in Paris and whose
influence was felt across the English-speaking
world and beyond (notably in Latin America;
see Holl & Reschke, 1999). During his lifetime,

which approximately corresponds to the period

under scrutiny in this paper, a series of
exemplary tropical sites the tropical forest,
the desert island, the mountain scene and the
coastal view was brought into focus, not for
the first time, but in ways which left a lasting
impression on the discourses of tropicality.
While I am principally concerned here with
an era before the institutionalisation of modern
academic geography, this paper addresses in
rather a precise sense the disciplining of
geographical knowledge. The production and
circulation of authoritative knowledge about
the tropical world during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, and especially the
making and recording of observations in situ,
required a particular kind of discipline of the
senses. This sort of discipline has often been
conceived by historians of science in terms of
the heightened emphasis on instrumentation
within the field sciences during this period and
the impetus to precision which this represents,
as for example in the celebrated case of
Humboldt himself (Cannon, 1978; Bourguet et
al., 2002). While this focus on instruments is
in itself necessary and tells us much about the
epistemology of contemporary natural science,
it is as important to recognise that the making
of observations in the field also required the
deployment of specific kinds of embodied skill
in the production of images and inscriptions
as reflected, for example, in what might be
called the instrumentalisation of hand and

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 25(1), 2004, 1-17

Copyright 2004 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Driver.p65

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Driver

eye. In this paper, I focus especially on the

place of a particular kind of visual image the
sketch made on the spot within two
connected spheres of knowledge: natural
history and navigation.1 In both these fields,
the application of graphic skills in the
depiction of tropical natures forms was
regarded as essential to the production of
authoritative knowledge. Here we are
concerned as much with practice as with
representation; or more precisely, with
practices of knowledge-making, and what
happens to them in the process of circulation
through the tropical world.

(Christ is supposed to have named them

Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, because of
their fiery zeal. They had called on God to
throw down fire from heaven in order to punish
the Samaritans.) Divided by these ten circles
together with 24 Meridians, Ruskin (1904:445)
wanted his globe to be simply coloured:

IMAGINING THE TROPICS

In place of the divisions and boundaries on

nineteenth-century globes, then, Ruskin had
substituted a graphic design with an ancient
pedigree. His representation of global space,
which would generally be regarded as fanciful
today, was in fact designed to enhance
students appreciation of principles of projection and their application in the graphic arts.
The key point in the present context, however,
is that his nomenclature and his system carry
no more symbolic meaning than those on a
conventional globe.

The modern dictionary definition of the tropics

tells a story of limits and the spaces between
them: in one form or another, it refers us to two
parallels of latitude stretching around the
earth, one 2327 north of the equator and the
other 2327 south of the equator, together
defining the boundary of that region in which
the sun may shine directly overhead. The
circles of Cancer and Capricorn, which have
since ancient times constituted the cartographic definition of the torrid zone, yield a
variety of further stories, connecting
astronomy, astrology, cosmography and myth.
The Greek root of the word tropics means a
turning, which refers both to the rotations of
the spheres and the notion of limits, here both
natural and moral. The inter-tropical zone has
frequently been imagined, as it was in antiquity,
as a realm of otherness, beyond the habitable
human realm (Cosgrove, 2001:29-53).
There are of course an infinite number of
ways of dividing global space. In an essay
entitled Of Map Drawing published in 1878,
for example, John Ruskin (1904) proposed a
new design for globes for use in schools.
These globes were to be inscribed with ten
latitudinal circles, each with its own name, such
as the Arabian, the Venetian, and the Christian.
Those nearest the equator, enclosing the most
glowing space of the tropics, he called St
Johns and St Jamess circles, after the apostles.

Driver.p65

within the Arctic circles, the sea pale

sapphire, and the land white; in the
temperate zones, the sea full lucia, and
the land pale emerald; and between the
tropics, the sea full violet, and the land
pale clarissa.

But we can go further than this, in so far as

the tropics were and are conceived as a
conceptual as well as a cartographic space.
Whether the adjective tropical denotes a
particular kind of experience, a look, a species,
a landform, a soil or a meteorological event,
the term carries with it a powerful array of
associations which may or may not be tied
very specifically to a particular geographical
zone or location. In this paper, I am particularly
concerned with what constitutes a tropical
view or vision, and with some of the ways in
which the tropical has been imagined as itself
a view or a vision to be experienced. The
representation of the tropics as a discrete
space, or perhaps more accurately as a distinct
set of associations, constitutes an important
part of this story. Indeed, the contrast between
the tropical and the temperate is one of
the most enduring themes in the history of
global imaginings. Whether represented

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Imagining the Tropics

positively (as in fantasies of the tropical
sublime) or negatively (as a pathological space
of degeneration), tropical nature has frequently
served as a foil to the temperate, to all that is
modest, civilised, cultivated. In this sense, as
has recently been suggested in the pages of
this journal, we might think of ideas about
tropical difference as part of a wider discourse,
akin to the discourse of Orientalism which
works to define and delimit the essential
difference between East and West. Just as the
discourse of Orientalism has its genealogists
following in the tracks of Edward Said, so too
the discourse of tropicality has attracted the
attention of an increasing number of historians
(see, for example, Arnold, 1996:141-68; Driver
& Yeoh, 2000; Stepan, 2001; Livingstone, 2002;
Bowd & Clayton, 2003).
Over the centuries, notions of the tropical
have thus been enrolled in a variety of
philosophical, political, scientific, medical and
aesthetic projects. Within the discourses of
natural history, travel and exploration, for
example, the theme of tropicality has had a
remarkably sustained influence, even when
perhaps especially when the actual
experience of tropical travel has failed to live
up to expectations. Its presence can also be
detected in a host of other cultural forms, from
epic poetry to landscape painting, as well as
in historical and philosophical reflections on
human nature and the wealth of nations. In
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we see
tropical difference given institutional expression in the emergence of distinct subdisciplinary specialisms tropical climatology,
tropical geography and, most notably, tropical
medicine though in each of these fields the
definition and limits of the tropical have been
anything but settled. In the course of the last
50 years, the discourse on tropicality has
further proliferated under the influence of
decolonisation, development, global tourism,
commodity advertising and environmental
politics. Images of the tropics, then, have long
been the site for European fantasies of selfrealisation, projects of cultural imperialism and
the politics of human or environmental

Driver.p65

salvage. In the post-colonial world, these

fantasies have, if anything, become more
pervasive, if distinctly less enchanting. And
the imaginative flow has certainly not at all
been one-way. Artists and intellectuals seeking
new cultural forms to describe their work in
what we now call the global South have
themselves appropriated the language of
tropicality for their own ends. Think, for
example, of the aesthetic of tropical modernism
which informed the work of the Brazilian
landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx
(Stepan, 2000); or the ambivalent cultural
politics of the tropiclia movement in Brazilian
popular music, as represented in the work of
Caetano Veloso (Dunn, 2002). In both these
cases, moreover, we move beyond the tired
oppositions between core and periphery: here
the problematic relationship between indigenous and cosmopolitan cultural forms is
empowering, not disabling.
In fact, this process of cultural exchange
transculturation, if you like brings into
question some of the ways in which
discourses like Orientalism have often been
conceived. In particular, the model of
projection which drives many accounts of
colonial discourse the West projecting its
sense of cultural difference on the rest is
badly in need of repair. One obvious risk is
that images (like the Orient or tropicality)
are conceived as already fully formed, readyto-be-projected, a position which greatly
exaggerates their coherence and consistency.
Another is that the cultural and natural worlds
are represented as a homogenous screen on
which these images are depicted. In such a
perspective, the discourse of tropicality would
project an image of the tropical world which
was produced by and for Europe, uncontaminated as it were by anything in between.
Instead, we might develop ways of conceiving
this process in terms of transactions rather
than projections: to think of images, certainly,
but to understand the process of their being
made as negotiated in various ways (Driver &
Yeoh, 2000:2-3). This would enable the
production of knowledge about the tropical

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Driver

world to be understood as a more differentiated, more uneven and ultimately more

human process; moreover, it would give more
agency, and autonomy, to the world being
represented. No longer a screen, but now a
living space of encounter and exchange.
One of the limitations of the language of
projection is that it tends to collapse an
argument about particular kinds of cultural
production into an argument about global
history as a whole, in which some cultures
and some spaces are essentially active and
others passive: in a nutshell, the West
represents the Rest. Yet, the thing which today
is called Europe has actually come into
being through various kinds of exchange with
the rest of the world. Culturally as well as
economically speaking, this Europe has
never been self-sufficient: it has always
learned, borrowed or stolen from elsewhere.
We have become so used to thinking of
European expansion including the exploration and colonisation of the tropical world
as the means of extending and dramatising an
already existing worldview that we have
underestimated the extent to which the process
of extension is actually transformative of the
European sense of self, culture, history (Hall,
1992). A fascinating if relatively late (and in
the grand scheme of things, rather minor)
example of this process at work may be found
in the career of the French historian Fernand
Braudel, who like several of his peers
(including the anthropologist Claude LviStrauss and the geographer Pierre Monbeig)
spent a formative period teaching in Brazil in
the 1930s. Reflecting on his career in later years,
Braudel once remarked that it was his period
in Brazil that turned him into a true intellectual.
It is, indeed, a striking revelation the design
of that masterwork, The Mediterranean and
the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip
II (Braudel, 1976), conceived not in France,
but in the very-nearly tropical So Paolo. Or
rather, in the transatlantic shuttling between
these worlds which Braudel experienced
during the late 1930s, wintering in the archives
of Europe, spending the rest of the year in

Driver.p65

Brazil (Paris, 1996; Skidmore, 2003). With that

other great geographical historian Lucien
Febvre, whom he met by chance on one of his
transatlantic crossings, Braudel later edited a
special issue of the journal Annales devoted
to the Latin Americas (in the plural,
significantly). The words of the introduction
still resonate today, half a century on:
Are we going to forget that we,
historians of the Old World, face the
Atlantic? This is recognised, even
today, in the quality and considerable
importance for us of a history that is as
much European, as fully European, as
it is powerfully South American. A
history that is an integral part of our
national histories, but still more of our
cultural history. A history of back-andforth movement, of loans and
repayments, of borrowings and refused
borrowings, of adventurous comings
and goings with composite interest. It
is already one of the first and most
important chapters in this history of
exchanges of worlds that each of us
begins in our dreams to develop for the
near future (Febvre, 1948, cited in
Mattelart, 1996:194-95).

TROPICAL VIEWS AND

VISIONS
The remainder of this paper addresses one
theme in this multiform history of exchanges
of worlds: specifically, the ways in which the
tropics were visualised by eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century European travellers, and
the role of graphic images in the production
and circulation of knowledges about the
tropical world. In this context, we can
understand the view as developing within a
topographic aesthetic, through which
landscapes are depicted at a distance, their
surface features translated into a recognisable
visual code. In this very general sense, the
term belongs equally to landscape sketching,
coastal survey and terrestrial mapping,
referring as it does to the apprehension of

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Imagining the Tropics

portions of the earths surface at a distance.
The vision, in contrast, is something which in
principle takes hold of the observer in a more
transformative way: it engages the imagination,
turning the spectator into an active participant
in the scene. Where the view is the product of
an enlightened rationality, the vision is the
means of asserting a new sensibility: not just
of an image of a discrete portion of space, but
the realisation of a new sense of the whole, in
which the eye of the observer is itself brought
into the frame. In practice, of course, the
distinction between views and visions is
more about epistemology than practice or
effect, or indeed affect. In particular, it is quite
possible (as I shall argue below) to treat the
charts and views of the surveyor as vestiges
of experience especially the experience of
trial and error rather than merely as inanimate data from which all traces of subjectivity
have been erased (see also Carter, 1999;
Burnett, 2000:67-117; Driver & Martins, 2002).
In considering the visualisation of the
tropical world during this period, the figure of
Alexander von Humboldt looms large, not least
because of his influence on subsequent
generations of naturalists and artists across
Europe and the Americas. The aesthetic
depiction of landscape was an integral part of
Humboldts philosophy; and it was of
particular significance in his representations
of the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics. For
Humboldt, the tropical world was a privileged
site, where the true variation and order of
nature could be observed in all its majesty
(Nicholson, 1990; Dettelbach, 1996). His lyrical
descriptions of tropical landscape left their
mark on those who travelled in his wake. In
April 1832, for example, Charles Darwin wrote
of his first sight (near Rio de Janeiro) of what
he called a tropical forest in all its sublime
grandeur, as if the scene demanded such a
response from any truly philosophical traveller.
I formerly admired Humboldt, I now almost
adore him; he alone gives any notion of the
feelings which are raised in the mind of first
entering the Tropics (Darwin, cited in
Cannon, 1978:87; see also Martins, 2000).

Driver.p65

Humboldts significance in this context is clear.

For those aspiring to the status of the truly
philosophical naturalist, as opposed to what
they regarded as the mere surveyor or collector,
the view had to be framed by a wider vision.
Humboldts vision of the natural world was
essentially physiographic: hence his abiding
concerns both with the spatial distribution of
natural phenomena over the surface of the
earth, and with their visual representation,
notably in the form of his celebrated iso-maps
(Dettelbach, 1999; Godlewska, 1999). Cartography was, however, only one such means
of representation, and Humboldt also made
full use of other sorts of diagrams, tableaux,
panoramas and descriptive narrative in his
depictions of landscape physiognomy in
various regions of the globe. His famous
cross-sectional landscape profile of the Andes
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, first sketched
on the spot at the foot of Mount Chimborazo
(Figure 1), was in fact a hybrid production
(Nicholson, 1990:173-78; Dettelbach, 1996:26772). It was intended to allow relationships
between such variables as vegetation, altitude,
topography and climate to be seen in one allembracing view. Combining a topographic
picture with text denoting the names of plants
typical of different altitudes, together with a
table of data in 16 columns alongside, the
image fused very different modes of representation, creating what Nigel Leask (2002:25354) calls a sort of scientific hyper-text.
In some respects, Humboldts celebrated
tableau is an ingenious development of
something rather more commonplace in the
literature of travel and exploration during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; that is,
the combination of graphic representations
with other kinds of data, including textual
descriptions. As Michael Bravo (1999) has
argued, the culture of precision associated
with Humboldtian science was not confined
to the use of refined instruments or numerical
data: it was also reflected in approaches to
evidence in the form of narratives, maps and
visual images generally. For Humboldt, as for

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Driver

Figure 1. Alexander von Humboldt, Gographie des plantes prs de lEquadeur, 1803,
ink and watercolour on paper. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional de Colombia,
Bogot, Colombia.
many of his contemporaries, the sketch of
natures forms made on the spot was thus a
vital source of knowledge. In the hands of a
skilled draughtsman, it promised something
more authentic than received wisdom. If more
synoptic and philosophical visions demanded
other sorts of skill available only to the savant
in his library, they nonetheless depended
ultimately on the accurate rendering of the
view in the field. In the remainder of this paper,
I shall consider the making of such views by
the hands of two exemplary figures, both of
whom travelled extensively within the tropical
world in the opening decades of the nineteenth
century. These vignettes are drawn from my
current research with Luciana Martins on the
image-making of naturalists and navigators
during this period (Driver & Martins, 2002;
Martins & Driver, 2005).

Natural history: Burchell and his

specimens
In 1826, having travelled for 14 months in
Brazil, William Burchell (1782-1863) wrote to a

Driver.p65

fellow naturalist about the botanical riches

of tropical nature. Its luxuriance defied even
his expectations as an experienced traveller
so much so, indeed, that he was tempted to
turn from Natural History to Painting.2 The
sentiment was entirely proper for a
Humboldtian; and in Burchells case, it was
no mere flight of fancy. His education had
included classes in landscape drawing with
Merigot, a French migr in London, and by
the time of his journey to Brazil he was already
an accomplished artist. During a period of 15
years spent working as a naturalist in St.
Helena, Southern Africa and Brazil, Burchell
used his considerable skills as a draughtsman,
in tandem with his scientific expertise, to
document the features of landscapes, peoples,
flora and fauna. He also collected a large
number of botanical, zoological and geological
specimens, which were packed up for transport
back to England.
If Burchell can be treated as an exemplary
figure, it is because his work so clearly

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Imagining the Tropics

illustrates the connections between new
paradigms of natural history, cultures of
collecting and the graphic depiction of
specimens. Consider for a moment how the
naturalists knowledge actually travels. How
was information about distant places to be
gathered? What forms should observation
take? By what means was it made available to
metropolitan science? How could its credibility
be assured? One of the prime ways in which
the knowledge of travelling naturalists could
be trusted, according to the rhetoric of
Banksian natural history, was through the
precise recording of information in a manner
laid down by metropolitan scientific
institutions: most commonly, through the use
of appropriate instruments, techniques of
observation, collection and inscription (Driver,
2001). Hence the proliferation of instruction
manuals for botanical and zoological collectors
emphasising the importance of recording
perishable data in words and sketches made
on the spot. In her study of early nineteenthcentury British zoology, Anne Larsen (1993)
distinguishes between two categories of such
data: that relating to the form of a living being,
such as colour, shape, and habits, and that
concerning its context, that is, where it was
located and the characteristics of its natural
habitat. As she contends, the
detailed examination of landscapes was
one of the most fundamental aspects
of natural history; instruction manuals
usually taught their readers how to see,
gather and record objects that conveyed
a sense of an areas particular natural
features and characteristics (Larsen,
1993:198).
To put instructions into practice, however, was
not so simple. Apart from an abundance of
time for collecting and drawing are both timeconsuming activities sketching also required
well-trained hands and eyes.
What we witness from the mid-eighteenth
century, then, is the refinement of a whole
methodology of field observation, designed

Driver.p65

to ensure that reliable and unvarnished

information could be collected, stored and
eventually transmitted back to the centre. Such
a model of observation is securely represented
in Burchells portrait of his wagon, in which
he travelled across southern Africa in 1810-15
(Figure 2). Though Burchells African journey
was not quite tropical in the cartographic
sense, I have argued elsewhere that this small
watercolour sketch does faithfully represent
key aspects of the practice of Humboldtian
natural history (Driver, 2001:17-19). Most
obviously, it is crammed with instruments of
all kinds compass, telescope, thermometer,
weighing scales, maps, specimen cases, plant
press and pistols as well as botanical and
zoological specimens, ethnographic portraits,
flag, hammock and flute. And of course
plentiful drawing materials. The first volume
of Burchells (1822:108-11, 118-20) Travels in
the Interior of Southern Africa includes a
painstaking description of the design of the
vehicle, which was adapted from the standard
Cape ox-wagon. The wagon effectively
functioned both as a mobile laboratory and as
an instrument itself, the rotations of its wheels
providing a means of calculating the distances
travelled. In fact, Burchell regarded his mobile
home as the most perfectly designed of any of
his instruments, and this is presumably why
he painstakingly composed this intimate
portrait.3 On the one hand, the wagon was
literally a vehicle for the pursuit of
metropolitan science; on the other hand, its
disarticulated construction was also well
adapted to the uneven terrain. Global functions,
as it were, calibrated to local conditions.
Burchells commitment to accuracy in
recording information in graphic, textual and
numerical form is striking. Typically, he made
a precise record of the time it took to complete
the watercolour sketch of his wagon (120
hours), just as he did when arranging and
labelling his botanical and zoological
specimens (Poulton, 1907:40). Burchells
abilities as a draughtsman are just as evident
in his depictions of the forms of tropical nature
within his St Helena sketchbook. Amongst

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Driver

Figure 2. William J. Burchell, Inside of my African Waggon, 1820, watercolour. Courtesy

of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, United Kingdom (UK).

Figure 3. William J. Burchell, A group of plantains from nature, St Helena,

20 February, 1807. Courtesy of the Royal Botanic Gardens Archives, Kew, UK.

Driver.p65

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Imagining the Tropics

numerous profiles of the island drawn from
the sea, there are several landscapes and
detailed drawings of natural history
specimens. One of these deserves attention
in the present context (Figure 3). This is a small
but remarkable sketch entitled A Group of
Plantains from Nature, dated 20 February
1807. Upon this drawing are drops of the
plantains own juice which have fallen on the
page, whether by accident or design. As
Luciana Martins and I have argued, these
drops are themselves used as a sort of
evidence not blood but drops of Plantain
juice, writes Burchell in pencil on his sketch.
In this way, the visual image becomes
something more than mere representation:
stained red by the specimen itself, the very
scrap of paper itself acquires scientific value.
No longer just an illustration, Burchells
sketch provides confirmation by proxy of the
authentic presence of the observer in the field,
thereby affirming his credibility as a faithful
witness (Martins & Driver, 2005).
As with many travelling naturalists,
Burchells vision of the tropical world was
activated by the drive to collect and to label,
to preserve what could be seen on the spot in
order to transmit knowledge at a distance. In
his case too, drawing and sketching came to
play a key role in the accurate rendering of the
forms of nature as well as human landscapes.
(Burchell, like Humboldt in fact, was keenly
interested in panoramas, and executed a large
panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro during his
stay in the city; see Martins, 2001.) He regarded
his sketches of natural forms, landscapes as
well as botanical specimens, as more than
accurate representations: they also constituted
material evidence in themselves, specimens by
proxy. In describing Burchell as exemplary,
however, I also mean to draw attention to his
failures as well as his achievements: in
particular, to his inability to master his vast
collections. His mania for collecting was
extraordinary, and he spent much of the last
35 years of his life trying to comprehend the
results: for example, it took him three years to
unpack and rearrange the 49,000 botanical

Driver.p65

11

specimens gathered in his five-year journey

through Brazil, and he spent four more years
relabelling them (Poulton, 1907:54). In later life,
Burchell complained constantly of lack of
space and time, his frustrations at what he
perceived as a lack of official support, and the
sheer scale of the task he had set himself. In
contrast to his work in South Africa, he failed
to publish anything of his travels in tropical
Brazil.

Navigation: Roe and his logbooks

For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the art of navigation, no less than
that of natural history, depended on the ability
to compose and to recognise an accurate
sketch from nature. The visual archive of
tropical travel is heavily stocked with charts,
sketches and more finished landscapes
produced by naval officers and midshipmen.
The history represented in this archive is
perhaps less heroic and more mundane than
that of the more philosophical naturalists in
search of new worlds, or even the travelling
artists seeking their fortunes from the making
of exotic views: the Navy is not, after all, the
place where you would expect to find
visionaries. And yet perhaps this story
deserves more attention from historians of
geography, especially given the role of naval
officers and Admiralty officials in the
foundation of the Royal Geographical Society
in 1830 (Driver, 2001:24-48). In the early
nineteenth century, in contrast with later
periods, servicemen were at the forefront of
earth science in a number of respects: indeed,
they were active in some of the most avantgarde scientific programmes of the period, from
astronomy to terrestrial magnetism.
As in the discussion of natural history, my
concern in this second vignette is with the
epistemology and aesthetics of sketching. The
ability to render accurately the dimensions,
detail and colour of coastal scenery was a vital
element in the art of navigation and charting.
To recognise and to reproduce coastlines was
an essential aspect of the surveyors task,
providing a record of the ships voyage and

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10

Driver

Figure 4. John Septimus Roe, Views of the Sugar Loaf, Rio de Janeiro, June 1817, from the
logbook of the transport Dick. Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia,
Perth, Australia.

Figure 5. John Septimus Roe, Views of the coastline between Cabo Frio and Rio de Janeiro,
May 1817. Courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.

Driver.p65

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Imagining the Tropics

enabling others to follow in its tracks. The
coastal view was thus an integral component
of maritime charts and logbooks, part of a
common visual code rendering the maritime
world intelligible to navigators (Martins, 1999).
Consider, for example, the images in Figures 4
and 5, drawn from a logbook kept by midshipman John Septimus Roe (1797-1878) on a
voyage from England to New South Wales in
1817 (Driver & Martins, 2002:145, 156). They
depict the topography of the Sugar Loaf and
adjacent features at Rio de Janeiro, a common
port of call for British ships bound for South
Africa, India, China and Australia during this
period. In some respects, these images
represent a way of seeing the tropical world
from the point of view of the British coastal
surveyor, part of a much wider network,
coordinated from the Admiralty, through which
the maritime empire, whether formal or informal,
was secured. More particularly, these images
reflect Roes training (as a would-be midshipman) in the arts of drawing and mapping at
Christs Hospital (London), and the subsequent
development of his technique at sea. The
logbook itself, of course, had a key role to play
in both the practice of navigation and the
politics of naval discipline. Its page layout in a
sense mirrored the strict spatial organisation
of the ship: every little bit of information had
its proper place, the entries designed to make
optimum use of the available space.
But these images also had other functions.
They could also express more personal
aspirations, in so far as drawing like writing
could provide a means of self-advancement.
Several of Roes logbooks, which today are
held in the State Library of Western Australia
(Perth), are immaculately produced, including
ornate frontispieces clearly designed to
impress his superiors and his relatives (Driver
& Martins, 2002:152). From his letters home to
his family, which also survive, it is clear that
the logbooks and charts provided an
opportunity to develop his skills as a
draughtsman, in a context of intense
competition for naval posts in the post-1815
era. From 1817, Roe worked under the

Driver.p65

13

11

supervision of Phillip Parker King, who had

been given the task of undertaking a coastal
survey of tropical Australia. The Admiralty
had specifically instructed him to supervise
Roes drawing and colour-washing on the
journey out (Hordern, 1997:24-26). The
physical labour of drawing, mapping and
sketching is painfully visible in Roes
correspondence. Indeed, throughout his early
naval career, he never ceased to lament the
effect of constant observation, sketching and
drawing on his overworked eyes. In December
1818, writing from Port Jackson, he
complained:
My sight has been so much impaired
by constantly looking out, since my
being employed in this service, that I
now find it difficult to distinguish
objects plainly without the aid of a
glass.4
It seems that, together with his books and
drawing instruments, Roes most precious
possession was the eye-water made up to his
mothers recipe. What he called the heat and
glare of tropical climes,5 as well as the
countless hours spent confined in candle-lit
cabins preparing his charts, would strain even
the most imperial eye.
Roes sketches, then, served a number of
purposes. Seen from the perspective of the
Admiralty in London, they provided more or
less reliable descriptions of the shape of
coastlines, within and beyond the tropics.
Seen from on board ship, they appear not only
as laborious experiments in a way of seeing,
but also as the far from certain means of an
attempt to secure a place in the world. In
comparison with Burchell, John Septimus Roe
began his career a lowly figure, without a
private income to support his ventures in
science and survey; but he did eventually
secure a position for himself as a colonial
surveyor in Western Australia. Years later, in
his letter of retirement (cited in Jackson,
1982:166), Roe impassively recorded the
physical effects of his labours on behalf of

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12

Driver

the imperial state, in a manner which speaks

volumes for the ways in which such service
was performed:
whilst actively employed in the Public
service the sight in one eye has been
completely destroyed, that of the other
eye very much damaged, the head has
twice been severely injured, as also the
left hand, and incurable hernia has been
contracted whilst forcing [sic] almost
impenetrable country.
Roe was no doubt seeking further reward for
services rendered; but his letter also reminds
us that there was nothing disembodied about
the work of colonial survey (Carter, 1987;
Driver & Martins, 2002).

REFLECTIONS ON THE VISUAL

What can we make of these stories of imagemaking in the tropics? My aim here has been
to investigate the ways in which images may
be crafted as tools of knowledge, ways of
apprehending the world in this case, the
tropical world. There is a wider point too. In
treating the subject of visual images and their
role in the production of geographical
knowledge, we do not have to choose between
representation and practice or performance,
as some recent claims for non-representational theory tend to suggest. Here we have
been concerned with a specific practice of
image-making, namely the art of drawing, and
its application in the production and
circulation of bodies of knowledge like natural
history and navigation. In these contexts,
image-making was clearly a highly regulated
affair involving the deployment of certain
conventions and skills, as well as being
embodied and performed in various ways.
The visual images considered in this paper
have been images of a particular kind: often,
they are sketches made from nature. As Martin
Rudwick (2000) has recently argued in a
notable essay on Georges Cuviers (1769-1832)
paper museum of fossil bones in the Paris

Driver.p65

14

Museum of Natural History, this sort of sketch

may be understood as a kind of proxy specimen,
the embodiment of evidence seen and recorded
in the field, destined in principle to be brought
back and fitted into a wider archive of
knowledge. This at least was the epistemology
of drawing as it was described in contemporary
manuals of natural history and navigation:
observation meant inscription and depiction
on the spot, trusting nothing to memory. In
practice, of course, these images cannot simply
be regarded as unvarnished originals, snapshots of the scenes they were supposed to
witness. Roes sketches, for example, were
composed according to conventional rules: but
they were worked and reworked, ultimately
serving as crucial resources for his own selffashioning. Burchells drawings were similarly
intended to be fitted within a system, partly of
his own making, and they too were worked and
reworked. Such images were certainly mobile,
but as Rudwick (2000) also shows they were
not immutable, even in this form. Today, in fact,
these images continue to have a life of their
own, though they are likely to be valued more
highly in the auction room than in the
laboratory.
There is a more specific point here about
the status of the finished image, notably in
the context of landscape art. Oil paintings of
tropical landscape by artists such as Johann
Moritz Rugendas (1802-58) and Frederic Edwin
Church (1826-1900), inspired by Humboldts
sublime vision, had a major impact in Europe
and North America during the nineteenth
century (Manthorne, 1989; Diener & Costa,
2002). The iconography of tropicality relied
on the recognition of typical or emblematic
landscape forms, so that certain visions could
transcend the particularities of the view and
stand in for aspects of tropical nature as a
whole, most notably of course the tropical
forest scene. There is room here for further
research on the geographies at work in this
process of circulation of ideas and images, as
well as people, plants and resources, through
the inter-tropical zone. Writing about Indias
place in the tropical world, for example, David

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Imagining the Tropics

13

Figure 6. Charles William Browne, Sugar Loaf and Cockovado [sic] from the sea, c.1818.
Courtesy of the Geyer collection, Museu Imperial, Petrpolis, Brazil.
Arnold (1998:6-9) has noted what he calls an
important piece of intra-tropical semantic
exchange: while the term hurricane travelled
from the Caribbean to the East Indies, the word
jungle, which originated as a Sanskrit term
meaning waste or uncultivated ground, came
to signify dense, damp forests throughout the
tropical world.6 Such exchanges have their
visual equivalents: thus, the tropical forests
of the Americas, as described by Humboldt,
were imaginatively transported to the old world
by European travellers. Alternatively, the
scenery of the Orient could be mapped onto
the topography of Rio de Janeiro, as in the
case of Figure 6, a pencil drawing by another
midshipman (discussed in Martins, 1999). This
delicate sketch, which bears the traces of the
experience of travelling across the globe in
the early nineteenth century, provides yet
another instance of that history of exchanges
of worlds described by Lucien Febvre in 1948.

Driver.p65

15

EMPIRE AND DISTURBANCE

Nicholas Thomas has recently questioned the
emphasis place on imperial designs in much
work on the history of cultural encounters. It
has become increasingly evident, Thomas
(1999:2-3) argues,
that the present range of approaches
exaggerates and reinscribes precisely
those western hegemonies they wishfully
challenge The tendency is to insist
upon the will to dominate in imperial
culture, science, and vision, without
investigating the ways in which the
apparatuses of colonialism and modernity
have been compromised locally.
The argument here is not of course that
empire is unimportant, but rather that its
effects were not always predictable or

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14

Driver

contained. In this spirit, I have been particularly concerned in my work to explore the
ways in which images of tropical nature may
reflect, or translate, the experience of travel,
its disappointments as well as its successes
(further developed in Driver, 2004).
We have heard much in recent writing
about the sheer ambition of the naturalists,
navigators and explorers who sought to
make the world an orderly place in the name
of enlightenment during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries (Stafford, 1989; Miller
& Reill, 1996; Edney, 1997; Drayton, 2000).
These world-makers imagined the creation
of vast archives of texts, images, artefacts
and specimens, patiently assembled,
through which the geography of the earth
could be made known. They created great
empires of learning, presided over in Britain
by such influential figures as the naturalist
Joseph Banks, the geographer-geologist
Roderick Murchison and the botanist
Joseph Hooker, whose networks extended
the reach of power and knowledge across
every continent and every sea. Theirs was a
suitably imperial vision, of order, system and
progress, in which the scientific travellers
role was to fill in the blanks: the keepers of
the imperial archive would do the rest.
If we look more closely at the archive of
tropical travel, however, it is clear that such
projects raised as many questions as they
answered. How was the experience of
travelling itself to be put into words and
images? To what extent did the encounter
with difference, in nature and culture,
undermine or affirm existing conventions?
Such questions as these were addressed
long ago in Bernard Smiths (1985) seminal
work on the impact of the Pacific voyages
on the development of European scientific
theories and landscape art, first published
in 1960. If European Vision and the South
Pacific remains an inspiration today, it is
partly because of its concerns with the
epistemological status of image-making in
what ways, precisely, can seeing be the

Driver.p65

16

equivalent of knowing? and partly because

in its treatment of the history of voyaging,
the space of experience is left open.7
The archive of tropical travel yields
evidence of something more fragile and
unpredictable alongside imperial ambition
and planetary consciousness: in a word,
disturbance. Jonathan Lamb (2001:7),
referring to eighteenth-century voyages of
discovery, puts the case well:
The commanders of these expeditions
may have been committed to large and
comprehensive views, and believed
devoutly in systems of classification and
cadastral measurement; but their data
proved intractable, their experiments
prone to failure, and they became periodically distracted, behaving unlike
themselves owing to the stress of
isolation, disease, fear and occasionally exquisite pleasure.
The more we look for it, indeed, the more the
evidence multiplies, and continues to multiply,
well beyond the late eighteenth century. We
can see the signs in the more humble
experiences of both Roe and Burchell, even
though they struggled hard to insure
themselves against the disturbing effects of
tropical travel. While the imperial eye sees
the history of knowledge-making in terms of
the establishment of a more or less coherent
system or network, there are other stories, in
which knowledge is anything but settled. In
attempting to trace the outlines of these other
stories, it is sometimes better to begin with a
sketch than a vision.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper forms part of an ongoing research
project with Luciana Martins on the theme of
tropical views and visions. I am indebted to
her for allowing me to draw on some of our
joint work here. The project was supported by
the Arts and Humanities Research Board
(AHRB) of the United Kingdom.

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Imagining the Tropics

ENDNOTES
On related issues in the practices of travelling
artists, see Greppi (2005) and Martins (2004).
1

Burchell to [Richard] Salisbury, letter, 11 August

1826, Linnean Society Archives, London, UK.
2

3
Of course, the space of the wagon was actually far
from self-sufficient: throughout his travels, Burchell
relied on the labours of his servants, the cooperation
of local inhabitants, and last but not least the health
of his oxen (Driver, 2001:19).

John S. Roe to J. Roe, letter, 7 December 1818,

J.S. Roe Papers, State Library of Western Australia,
Perth, Australia.
4

John S. Roe to J. Roe, letter, 29 January 1821, J.S.

Roe Papers, State Library of Western Australia, Perth,
Australia.
5

6
On later readings of jungle, see Birtles (1997)
and Sioh (1998).

7
There have been many attempts to rework these
themes in the light of postcolonial concerns; see
especially Thomas and Losche (1999).

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