Abstract
This book examines British scientific and antiquarian perceptions and representations of northern regions in c. 1790–1830, building on recent studies of Romanticism and the sciences to consider their complementary roles in experiences of the north.2 Particular attention is paid to climate theory and intersections of apparent opposites, such as the sciences and antiquarianism, and native and newcomer ways of knowing, to establish the bases upon which contemporary British “men of science” interacted with the north. Romantic-scientific travel accounts form a significant but heretofore largely ignored component of Romanticism in their consolidation of humanities and sciences. Traveling men of science indulged in antiquarianism and ethnology alongside cartography, meteorology, astronomy, mineralogy, and geology, providing a baseline of antiquarian and historical perspectives placed within scientific frameworks and providing the foundation for interactions with northern indigenous peoples.
Ask where’s the North? at York’tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where;
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour further gone than he.1
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Notes
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© 2013 Angela Byrne
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Byrne, A. (2013). Introduction: “Ask Where’ the North?”. In: Geographies of the Romantic North. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311320_1
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