A collection of writings on travels undertaken in the Victorian era. The texts collected in these volumes show how 19th century travel literature served the interests of empire by promoting British political and economic values that translated into manufacturing goods.

In 1841, a twenty-eight-year-old Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, began the first of his exploratory treks into the African veldt. During the course of his lifetime, he covered over 29,000 miles uncovering what lay beyond rivers and mountain ranges where no other white man had ever been. Livingstone was the first European to make a trans-African passage from modern day Angola to Mozambique and he discovered and named numerable lakes, rivers and mountains. His explorations are still considered one of the toughest series of expeditions ever undertaken. He faced an endless series of life-threatening situations, often at the hands of avaricious African chiefs, cheated by slavers traders and attacked by wild animals. He was mauled by a lion, suffered thirst and starvation and was constantly affected by dysentery, bleeding from hemorrhoids, malaria and pneumonia.This biography covers his life but also examines his relationship with his wife and children who were the main casualties of his endless explorations in Africa. It also looks Livingstone's legacy through to the modern day. Livingstone was an immensely curious person and he made a habit of making meticulous observations of the flora and fauna of the African countryside that he passed through. His legacy includes numerable maps and geographical and botanical observations and samples. He was also a most powerful and effective proponent for the abolition of slavery and his message of yesterday is still valid today in a continent stricken with drought, desertification and debt for he argued that the African culture should be appreciated for its richness and diversity. But like all great men, he had great faults. Livingstone was unforgiving of those that he perceived had wronged him; he was intolerant of those who could not match his amazing physical powers; and finally and he had no compunction about distorting the truth, particularly about other people, in order to magnify his already significant achievements.

The Romantic Period saw the advance of the massive British imperial expansion that was to make it dominant for most of the 19th century. There was a corresponding expansion in travel writings, which, highly popular in their own time, seemed to bring exotic realms within the grasp of the reading public and were a source for ethnographic and cultural information about other societies.

The contributions to this volume have been selected from the papers delivered at the 34th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies at Birmingham, in April 2000. Travellers to and in the Byzantine world have long been a subject of interest but travel and communications in the medieval period have more recently attracted scholarly attention. This book is the first to bring together these two lines of enquiry. Four aspects of travel in the Byzantine world, from the sixth to the fifteenth century, are examined here: technicalities of travel on land and sea, purposes of travel, foreign visitors' perceptions of Constantinople, and the representation of the travel experience in images and in written accounts. Sources used to illuminate these four aspects include descriptions of journeys, pilot books, bilingual word lists, shipwrecks, monastic documents, but as the opening paper shows the range of such sources can be far wider than generally supposed. The contributors highlight road and travel conditions for horses and humans, types of ships and speed of sea journeys, the nature of trade in the Mediterranean, the continuity of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, attitudes toward travel. Patterns of communication in the Mediterranean are revealed through distribution of ceramic finds, letter collections, and the spread of the plague. Together, these papers make a notable contribution to our understanding both of the evidence for travel, and of the realities and perceptions of communications in the Byzantine world. Travel in the Byzantine World is volume 10 in the series published by Ashgate/Variorum on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.

Portuguese Asia, otherwise known as the Estado da A ndia Oriental, has been far less studied than the Spanish empire in America, its counterpart in the Western hemisphere. It differed from that vast entity in that it was essentially a maritime trading operation held together by strategic territories, such as Goa, Ceylon, or Macau. For more than a century these afforded it control of much of the Indian Ocean. As Professor Winius shows, it was certainly the most peculiar and colourful operation that existed in the history of European expansion, even giving rise to a second, 'shadow' empire created by escapees and renegades from its royal administration. Some of these essays reflect on Portuguese involvement in other areas, notably the Atlantic, and the impact this had in the East, but their focus is on the Portuguese in South and Southeast Asia. They describe its nature and its rise and fall, from the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to its dismemberment by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, and include studies on the jewel trade and on the Renaissance in Goa.

The Romantic Period saw the advance of the massive British imperial expansion that was to make it dominant for most of the 19th century. There was a corresponding expansion in travel writings, which, highly popular in their own time, seemed to bring exotic realms within the grasp of the reading public and were a source for ethnographic and cultural information about other societies.

The transformation of the medieval European image of the world in the period following the Great Discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries is the subject of this volume. The first studies deal specifically with the emergence of the concept of the terraqueous globe. In the following pieces Dr Randles looks at the advances in Portuguese navigation and cartography that helped sailors overcome the obstacles to the circumnavigation of Africa and the crossing of the Atlantic, and at the impact of the Discoveries on European culture and science. Other articles are concerned with Portuguese naval artillery, and with attempts to classify the indigenous societies of the newly-discovered lands and to map the interior of Africa.

In 1913, an expedition was sent to the Arctic, funded by the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Illinois. Its purpose was twofold: to discover whether an archipelago called Crocker Land-reportedly spotted by an earlier explorer in 1906-actually existed; and to engage in scientific research in the Arctic. When explorers discovered that Crocker Land did not exist, they instead pursued their research, made a number of important discoveries and documented the region's indigenous inhabitants and natural habitat. Their return to America was delayed by the difficulty of engaging a relief ship, and by the danger of German submarines in Arctic waters during the World War I.

An accessible and groundbreaking text that takes a fresh view of contemporary geographical issues by looking at the geographies we have lost. Geography means writing about the world. Alternative ways of writing about the world are introduced and critically evaluated. The book discusses medieval cosmologies, Renaissance magic, feng shui, and the knowledge systems of indigenous people. Alternative Geographies provides an alternative way of looking, describing and understanding the world

Arid and semi-arid areas are now facing a threefold holistic crisis: economic, food, and climate. What has emerged from these crises is the vital importance of inter-linkages among them on the one hand, and the missed opportunities in putting these pieces together on the other. This book has tried to explore these challenges though in-depth discussions of the individual. It is anticipated to inspire a forward looking debate that looks at the lessons from the past and points to actions for the future. Expertise views have been shared scientists and persons of eminence on the national and state level challenges with futuristic remedial approaches.

Climatic variations often tend to have adverse effect on the yield and production of crops. Efforts have, therefore, been on for harnessing this natural resource through artificial means for increasing crop productivity. One such technology is protected cultivation. This technique is well adopted in Europe and USA and now China and Japan are leading in controlled sphere production of horticultural crops. In India, the technology is making breakthrough in Karnataka and Maharashtra in protected cultivation of pepper, tomato, cucumber, muskmelon, baby corn etc. Precision farming is defined as the cultivation by adopting technologies which give maximum precision in production of a superior crop with a desired yield levels and quality at competitive production. These include use of genetically modified crop varieties, micropropagation, integrated nutrient, water and pest managements, protected cultivation, organic farming, hi-tech horticulture, and post harvest technology. Post-harvest sector needs lot of precision. Peels, rags, etc. go waste. Many times, peels being rich in polyphenols, colouring pigment, nutrients etc are richer in antioxidant than what we actually eat. Here, we need precision. Precision in management, precision in product diversification, precision in value addition are much sought after aspect.

Captain Woodfield made 20 seasonal voyages to the Antarctic on three research ships between 1955 and 1974. Starting as a Junior Deck Officer he worked for The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey which in 1964 became the British Antarctic Survey. He played a paramount role in the gradual change from using under-powered and poorly-equipped ships to the professionally-managed and sophisticated vessels of his last command. The arts of exploration and survival during his early years in this majestic but unforgiving continent are described as attempts were made to establish research stations, support science, and survey in totally uncharted, ice-filled waters amidst often ferocious weather. Dramatic stories are featured such as the near loss of a ship in pack ice, the stranding of another in hurricane force winds and the collapse of an ice-cliff onto the vessel The pioneers of Antarctic exploration, the area's history, the hardships and incredible achievements of those original seafarers are described.Yet polar navigation during the author's years was not without peril and the near loss in ice of his first ship, the RRS Shackleton, the demise of her Master, and his ill-judged replacement and consequent dramas are fully told.

In 1869, Hayyim Habshush, a Yemeni Jew, accompanied the European orientalist Joseph Halévy on his archaeological tour of Yemen. Twenty years later, Habshush wrote A Vision of Yemen, a memoir of their travels, that provides a vivid account of daily life, religion, and politics. More than a simple travelogue, it is a work of trickster-tales, thick anthropological descriptions, and reflections on Jewish–Muslim relations. At its heart lies the fractious and intimate relationship between the Yemeni coppersmith and the "enlightened" European scholar and the collision between the cultures each represents. The book thus offers a powerful indigenous response to European Orientalism. This edition is the first English translation of Habshush's writings from the original Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew and includes an accessible historical introduction to the work. The translation maintains Habshush's gripping style and rich portrayal of the diverse communities and cultures of Yemen, offering a potent mixture of artful storytelling and cultural criticism, suffused with humor and empathy. Habshush writes about the daily lives of men and women, rich and poor, Jewish and Muslim, during a turbulent period of war and both Ottoman and European imperialist encroachment. With this translation, Alan Verskin recovers the lost voice of a man passionately committed to his land and people.

The literature of medieval knighthood is shown to have influenced exploration narratives from Marco Polo to Captain John Smith. Explorers from Marco Polo to Captain John Smith viewed their travels and discoveries in the light of attitudes they absorbed from the literature of medieval knighthood. Their own accounts, and contemporary narratives [reinforced by the interest of early printers], reveal this interplay, but historians of exploration on the one hand, and of chivalry on the other, have largely ignored this cultural connection. Jennifer Goodman convincingly develops the ideaof the chivalric romance as an imaginative literature of travel; she traces the publication of medieval chivalric texts alongside exploration narratives throughout the later middle ages and renaissance, and reveals parallel themesand preoccupations. She illustrates this with the histories of a sequence of explorers and their links with chivalry, from Marco Polo to Captain John Smith, and including Gadifer de la Salle and his expedition to the Canary Islands, Prince Henry the Navigator, Cortes, Hakluyt, and Sir Walter Raleigh. JENNIFER GOODMAN teaches at Texas A & M University.

The static cone penetrometer (CPT) and the piezocone (CPTU) represents the most versatile tools currently available for in-situ soil exploration. Over the last 30 years there has been significant growth and development in the use of CPT and this is reflected in the impressive growth of the theoretical and experimental knowledge on the cone penetrometer and piezocone as well as in the several applications of the test to highly specialised measurements, e.g. seismic, environmental and electrical resistivity measurements.
The purpose of this book is to provide guidance on the specification, performance, use and interpretation of the Electric Cone Penetration Test (CPU), and in particular the Cone Penetration Test with pore pressure measurement (CPTU) commonly referred to as the "piezocone test". Recommendation guidelines interpret a full range of geotechnical parameters from cone penetration data and relevant examples and case histories are given throughout the text.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203477995

These essays deal with questions of navigation and, more broadly, the intellectual challenges posed by Spain's acquisition of an empire across the Atlantic. Crudely, they had to find out what was where and how to get there. The first section of the volume looks at the 16th-century Sevillan cosmographers and pilots charged with this task: their achievements, the social and political context in which they worked, and the methods used to establish scientific truths - including the resort to litigation. Ursula Lamb then turns to examine specific problems, from the routing of transatlantic shipping to the application of cartographic coordinates to allocate unexplored territories. The final articles move forward to the time when, after a lapse of two centuries, Spanish nautical science became revitalised, and the Spanish Hydrographic Office was established.

This volume reflects the advances in research and methodology that have been made since 1960, as well as the increasing number of topics covered by the historiography of the European expansion. The studies selected demonstrate the range of this material, focusing in particular on the beginnings of trans-oceanic expansion by the Iberian powers. The volume has the further purpose of showing how the early encounters set precedents for subsequent patterns of interaction.

In Africa Dances Gorer takes the reader on an odyssey across West Africa, in the company of Feral Benga, one of the great black ballet stars of 1930s Paris. It is a devastating critique of colonial rule, which is shown to be destroying African society just as effectively as Christian missionaries undermine indigenous morality. Africa Dances captures the rich physical and psychological detail of African village life from food and architecture to dance and magic. Gorer witnesses men diving for three-quarters of an hour without coming up for breath, witch-doctors conjuring thunderstorms out of clear blue skies, and chameleon fetishists whose skin changes from a dirty white to almost black. This is a place where if you believe, you can.

In the 1890s, the Danish lieutenant Ole Olufsen set out to lead two expeditions to Tsarist Central Asia. Exploring areas that were still blank on European and Russian maps, the participants spent more than a year traveling on horseback in the pamirs and adjacent valleys bordering Afghanistan, China, and British India. Esther Fihl offers an in-depth study of these Danish expeditions and presents the magnificent collection of objects brought back to the National Museum of Denmark. Drawing on diaries, reports, and published works and a scrutiny of the guiding principles for their collecting of objects, she demonstrates how these explorers portrayed the cultures encountered. This work is a treasure for anyone interested in Central Asia, early anthropological theory, material culture, or European travel literature. They lived with Kyrgyz nomads who carved out an existence for themselves above the tree line with their sheep, goats, and yaks. Traveling along the river Pandsh, they were the first Europeans to collect ethnographical information on the transhumant pastoralists in the elevated valleys bordering Afghanistan. On the steppes of the western lowlands, the Danish expeditions stopped in Samarkand, Khiva, and Bukhara, commercial hubs on the old Silk Road. As official guests of both the emir of Bukhara and the khan of Khiva, they studied the handicrafts of the bazaars and the irrigation agriculture practiced by the Tajiks and Uzbeks. On visits to Merv they also spent time with Turkmen nomadic tribes who had only recently been fighting the Russian colonial power.