EXPLORERS

An examination of the travels of both famous and lesser-known individuals that seeks to redefine the meaning of exploration.

The impulse to explore is as “universal” as it is key to understanding history and the human condition, avers Lockwood, a history professor at the University of Alabama. Yet history has too often flattened exploration narratives to focus on specific individuals (white males) and motivations (economic gain and/or political interest). Analyzing Sumerian, Sinhalese, Greek, Hopi, and Aztec legends, Lockwood suggests that all these imagined journeys echo humanity’s original travels out of Africa. But even when explorations such as those undertaken by Venetian Marco Polo to China and Uyghur monk Rabban Bar Sauma to Europe are documented, the actual explorers tend to “become legends themselves.” Those legends in turn inspired both European and Chinese explorers to embark on voyages across open seas that would lead to what Lockwood calls “the age of convergence.” Some, like Christopher Columbus, dreamed of New World riches and glory; others, like naturalists Alexander von Humboldt, sought to understand the natural world of the Americas. While the knowledge gained and exchanged on these journeys led to narratives that “were used to justify imperialism and exploitation," Lockwood argues that counternarratives emerged from explorers who used travel “to interpret the world and its peoples in altogether different ways.” Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, used her insights into Middle Eastern culture and health practices to refute stories of Eastern salaciousness and to help Europeans fight smallpox. And Matthew Henson, the African American sharecropper’s son who accompanied Robert Peary to the Arctic Circle, transformed the act of journeying into the ultimate statement of freedom and self-determination. As it thoughtfully demystifies and democratizes the concept of exploration, Lockwood’s book reminds readers that discovery itself is “not unidirectional and never belongs to a single group of people.”

Engaging and thought provoking.