A Frozen Field of Dreams, Science, Strategy, and the Antarctic in Norway, Sweden, and the British Empire, 1912-1952


Book Description

The dissertation examines how actors in Norway, Sweden, and the British Empire conceived the Antarctic as a space for science during the years 1912 to 1952. Instead of tracing a narrative of enlightenment, how science became the dominant form of activity in the Antarctic, I examine a series of episodes with particular attention to why particular kinds of science held sway within specific political, cultural, and economic contexts. Concerned more with how Antarctic science was planned and justified than how it was executed in the field, the project draws upon recent scholarship in geography and geopolitics, as well as the history of exploration. The six case studies involve an aborted Anglo-Swedish Antarctic expedition in 1912; Britain's interwar Antarctic whaling research program; debates among whaling magnates and their associates over the relationship between Antarctic science and whaling in interwar Norway; the culture of polar exploration that emerged at Cambridge (and to some extent Oxford) between the world wars; the approach to polar exploration and quantitative glaciology pioneered by the Swedish geographer Hans Ahlmann; and the complicated history of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition (1949-52). I conclude with an epilogue arguing that the rise of international science in the Antarctic during the 1950s reflected the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War, rather than the triumph of science over politics.




Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region


Book Description

Throughout the twentieth century, glaciologists and geophysicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden made important scientific contributions across the Arctic and Antarctic. This research was of acute security and policy interest during the Cold War, as knowledge of the polar regions assumed military importance. But scientists also helped make the polar regions Nordic spaces in a cultural and political sense, with scientists from Norden punching far above their weight in terms of population, geographical size or economic activity. This volume presents an image of Norden that stretches far beyond its conventional limits, covering a vast area in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Sea, as well as parts of Antarctica. Rich in resources, scarce in population, but critically important in global and regional geopolitics, these spaces were contested by major powers such as Russia, the United States, Canada and, in the Antarctic, Argentina, Australia, South Africa and others. The empirical focus on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish influence in the polar regions during the twentieth century embraces a diverse array of themes, from the role of science in policy and diplomacy to the tensions between nationalism and internationalism, with clear relevance to the important role science plays in contemporary discussions about Nordic engagement with the polar regions.




Antarctic Security in the Twenty-first Century


Book Description

The Antarctic Treaty (1959) was adopted for the purpose of bringing peace and stability to the region and to facilitate cooperation in scientific research conducted on and around the continent. It has now been over fifty years since the Antarctic Treaty's entry into force, nevertheless, security continues to both drive and shape the legal and policy regime which applies to Antarctica. This book explores a wide range of Antarctic and Southern Ocean issues through the lens of security. The contributions to this volume engage with a security discourse which has expanded beyond the traditional military domain to include notions of economic security, environmental security, food security, bio-security, heath security and human security. The chapters consider topics such as the implications for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean of the growing strategic competition between the rising powers of Asia, the possible effects of climate change on the authority, legitimacy and effectiveness of the Antarctic Treaty System, and the shift from 'strategic' security to 'human' security and its potential consequences for the Antarctic treaty regime.




Ocean Science and the British Cold War State


Book Description

This book focuses on the activities of the scientific staff of the British National Institute of Oceanography during the Cold War. Revealing how issues such as intelligence gathering, environmental surveillance, the identification of ‘enemy science’, along with administrative practice informed and influenced the Institute’s Cold War program. In turn, this program helped shape decisions taken by Government, military and the civil service towards science in post-war Britain. This was not simply a case of government ministers choosing to patronize particular scientists, but a relationship between politics and science that profoundly impacted on the future of ocean science in Britain.




Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region


Book Description

Throughout the twentieth century, glaciologists and geophysicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden made important scientific contributions across the Arctic and Antarctic. This research was of acute security and policy interest during the Cold War, as knowledge of the polar regions assumed military importance. But scientists also helped make the polar regions Nordic spaces in a cultural and political sense, with scientists from Norden punching far above their weight in terms of population, geographical size or economic activity. This volume presents an image of Norden that stretches far beyond its conventional limits, covering a vast area in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Sea, as well as parts of Antarctica. Rich in resources, scarce in population, but critically important in global and regional geopolitics, these spaces were contested by major powers such as Russia, the United States, Canada and, in the Antarctic, Argentina, Australia, South Africa and others. The empirical focus on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish influence in the polar regions during the twentieth century embraces a diverse array of themes, from the role of science in policy and diplomacy to the tensions between nationalism and internationalism, with clear relevance to the important role science plays in contemporary discussions about Nordic engagement with the polar regions.




Greening the Alliance


Book Description

Following the launch of Sputnik, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a prominent sponsor of scientific research in its member countries, a role it retained until the end of the Cold War. As NATO marks sixty years since the establishment of its Science Committee, the main organizational force promoting its science programs, Greening the Alliance is the first book to chart NATO’s scientific patronage—and the motivations behind it—from the organization’s early days to the dawn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on previously unseen documents from NATO’s own archives, Simone Turchetti reveals how its investments were rooted in the alliance’s defense and surveillance needs, needs that led it to establish a program prioritizing environmental studies. A long-overlooked and effective diplomacy exercise, NATO’s “greening” at one point constituted the organization’s chief conduit for negotiating problematic relations between allies. But while Greening the Alliance explores this surprising coevolution of environmental monitoring and surveillance, tales of science advisers issuing instructions to bomb oil spills with napalm or Dr. Strangelove–like experts eager to divert the path of hurricanes with atomic weapons make it clear: the coexistence of these forces has not always been harmonious. Reflecting on this rich, complicated legacy in light of contemporary global challenges like climate change, Turchetti offers both an eye-opening history of international politics and environmental studies and a thoughtful assessment of NATO’s future.




Reinterpreting Exploration


Book Description

Exploration was a central and perhaps defining aspect of the West's encounters with other peoples and lands. Rather than reproduce celebratory narratives of individual heroism and national glory, this volume focuses on exploration's instrumental role in shaping a European sense of exceptionalism and its iconic importance in defining the terms of cultural engagement with other peoples. In chapters offering broad geographic range, the contributors address many of the key themes of recent research on exploration, including exploration's contribution to European imperial expansion, Western scientific knowledge, Enlightenment ideas and practices, and metropolitan print culture. They reassess indigenous peoples' responses upon first contacts with European explorers, their involvement as intermediaries in the operations of expeditions, and the complications that their prior knowledge posed for European claims of discovery. Underscoring that exploration must be seen as a process of mediation between representation and reality, this book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to the ongoing reinterpretation of exploration's role in the making of the modern world.




The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions


Book Description

The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions is a landmark collection drawing together the history of the Arctic and Antarctica from the earliest times to the present. Structured as a series of thematic chapters, an international team of scholars offer a range of perspectives from environmental history, the history of science and exploration, cultural history, and the more traditional approaches of political, social, economic, and imperial history. The volume considers the centrality of Indigenous experience and the urgent need to build action in the present on a thorough understanding of the past. Using historical research based on methods ranging from archives and print culture to archaeology and oral histories, these essays provide fresh analyses of the discovery of Antarctica, the disappearance of Sir John Franklin, the fate of the Norse colony in Greenland, the origins of the Antarctic Treaty, and much more. This is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of our planet.




A Memory of Ice


Book Description

In the southern summer of 1972/73, the Glomar Challenger was the first vessel of the international Deep Sea Drilling Project to venture into the seas surrounding Antarctica, confronting severe weather and ever-present icebergs. A Memory of Ice presents the science and the excitement of that voyage in a manner readable for non-scientists. Woven into the modern story is the history of early explorers, scientists and navigators who had gone before into the Southern Ocean. The departure of the Glomar Challenger from Fremantle took place 100 years after the HMS Challenger weighed anchor from Portsmouth, England, at the start of its four-year voyage, sampling and dredging the world’s oceans. Sailing south, the Glomar Challenger crossed the path of James Cook’s HMS Resolution, then on its circumnavigation of Antarctica in search of the Great South Land. Encounters with Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the US Exploring Expedition and Douglas Mawson of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition followed. In the Ross Sea, the voyages of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror under James Clark Ross, with the young Joseph Hooker as botanist, were ever present. The story of the Glomar Challenger’s iconic voyage is largely told through the diaries of the author, then a young scientist experiencing science at sea for the first time. It weaves together the physical history of Antarctica with how we have come to our current knowledge of the polar continent. This is an attractive, lavishly illustrated and curiosity-satisfying read for the general public as well as for scholars of science.




Albion's Seed


Book Description

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.