Books by Michael F Robinson
The Lost White Tribe traces the rise and fall of the Hamitic Hypothesis, a 19th century anthropol... more The Lost White Tribe traces the rise and fall of the Hamitic Hypothesis, a 19th century anthropological theory that claimed that humans originated in Asia and then migrated to other regions of the world. The theory was used to explain the discovery of so-called “white races” in Africa in the late 1800s. The Hamitic Hypothesis was not simply a curiosity of anthropological science. It was an idea that changed lives: from those European colonists who relied upon it to justify their presence in Africa, to the scientists who used it to explain away the accomplishments of African civilizations as a result of “white” influence. Ultimately, the tracking the Hamitic Hypothesis helps not merely to explain the mystery of white tribes, but helps illuminates important aspects of the modern world. It anchored a global theory of human origins and migration that, when combined with the Aryan race theory, shaped anthropology, colonial policy, and even the attitudes of Africans themselves.
The Coldest Crucible takes up the story of Arctic exploration in the United States from 1850 to 1... more The Coldest Crucible takes up the story of Arctic exploration in the United States from 1850 to 1910. During this time, “Arctic fever” swept the nation as dozens of American adventurers sailed north to the Arctic to find a sea route to Asia, and ultimately, to stand at the North Pole. Few missions were successful and many men lost their lives en route. Yet failure did little to dampen the enthusiasm of the new explorers or the crowds that cheered them on. How explorers came to see exploration as meaningful work – so meaningful that they risked, and sometimes lost, their lives – is the question at the heart of Coldest Crucible. Arctic exploration, I argue, was an activity that unfolded in America as much as it did in the wintry hinterland.
Papers by Michael F Robinson
Isis, 2020
While travelers have generally sought to avoid peril, some modern ones-namely, explorers, scienti... more While travelers have generally sought to avoid peril, some modern ones-namely, explorers, scientists, and adventurers-have come to embrace risk as an essential ingredient of their expeditions. The evolution of risk as an object of, rather than an obstacle to, travel has been long in the making. Yet this evolution is tricky to chart, since the desire for risk-oriented travel has grown up alongside demands for safer travel. In fact, the processes are linked. The tangled threads of travel, as a process that sometimes avoids and sometimes leans into danger, make the story of expeditionary disasters more complicated. Yet they also make these stories worth telling. Travel disasters are not merely the stuff of National Geographic and the Discovery Channel; they are tools that give us new ways to think about modern mobility-scientific exploration, tourism, extreme adventurism, and the travel of exile-practices usually treated independently but that here are connected and compared.
The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, 2019
Scientific travel writing came of age in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, emerg... more Scientific travel writing came of age in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, emerging at a time when the methods and institutions of science itself were in flux. It benefited from the massive expansion of Western empires during the Renaissance and Enlightenment as well as from the use of new maritime technologies. It was also shaped by the changing nature of publication and readership.
Citation: Robinson, M. (2019). Scientific Travel. In N. Das & T. Youngs (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (pp. 488-503). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316556740.032
Two facets of exploration, the modern and the nostalgic, have framed the idea of exploration sin... more Two facets of exploration, the modern and the nostalgic, have framed the idea of exploration since the late 1700s. The combination of these facets led to certain paradoxes. Explorers often proclaimed their expeditions as evidence of the progress of civilization even as they reveled in adventures that they depicted as an escape from civilization. The uneasy relationship between nostalgic and futuristic visions of exploration began to fray in the middle decades of the twentieth century as explorers confronted environments so extreme that they had to bring their own environments with them. Yet the spirit of nostalgia is not dead. If exploration has been systematized by scientists on earth and mechanized by missions into space, it maintains its nineteenth-century ethos in the world of extreme adventure.
Americans crowded newsstands in early 1910 to read Robert Peary's firsthand account of his expedi... more Americans crowded newsstands in early 1910 to read Robert Peary's firsthand account of his expedition to the North Pole. As they read " The Discovery of the North Pole, " serialized exclusively in Hampton's Magazine, few knew that this harrowing , hypermasculine tale was really crafted by New York poet Elsa Barker. Bark-er's authorship of the North Pole story put her at the center of a large community of explorers, writers, patrons, and fans who were taken with Arctic exploration as much for its national symbolism as for its thrilling tales. The fact that Barker was a woman made her ascent into elite expeditionary circles remarkable. Yet this essay argues that it was also representative: women shaped the ideas and practices of manly exploration at home as well as in the field. Peary's dependence upon women writers, patrons, and audiences came at a time when explorers were breaking away from their traditional base of support: male scientific networks that had promoted their expeditions since the 1850s. Despite the " go-it-alone " ideals of their expedition accounts, explorers adopted masculine roles shaped by the world around them: by the growing influence of women writers, readers, and lecture-goers and, simultaneously , by the declining influence of traditional scientific peers and patrons. Barker and Peary's story, then, reveals a new fault line that opened up between scientists and explorers in the late nineteenth century over the issue of manliness, a fault line still largely uncharted in historical scholarship. When American explorer Robert Peary took the podium at the Eighth International Geographic Congress in 1904, he addressed an audience well aware of the new competitive spirit of polar exploration. " There is no higher, purer field of rivalry than this Arctic and Antarctic quest, " he told the Congress. The rivalry was there for all to see. The audience was filled with polar experts as well as Peary's personal rivals, men who had fielded expeditions to the polar regions over the previous twenty years. By the beginning of the twentieth century, polar exploration had become a new form of geopo-litical theater, an expression of what political scientist Joseph S. Nye would later call " soft power " that attracted the attentions
This essay looks at the scientific and cultural roles of the gravity pendulum on the Greely Exped... more This essay looks at the scientific and cultural roles of the gravity pendulum on the Greely Expedition, the ill-fated U.S. expedition that participated in the first International Polar Year (1883-1884)
A reevaluation of the life and work of Arctic explorer Frederick Cook.
Essay for online arts folio, Drunken Boat.
Intro essay for Endeavour's special issue commemorating the centennial of the Scott-Amundsen race... more Intro essay for Endeavour's special issue commemorating the centennial of the Scott-Amundsen race to the South Pole.
Why should we explore Mars? In debating an answer to this question, the space community has revea... more Why should we explore Mars? In debating an answer to this question, the space community has revealed a deep divide: one that extends beyond policy to touch at the basic meaning of exploration. While a scientific vision of Mars, with a focus on telerobotic exploration, may not excite the public to the same extent as human missions, it is achievable within the current fiscal climate. Moreover, the value of such tele-robotic missions can be measured by the amount and significance of data gathered. By contrast, human missions to Mars will be exceptionally expensive and will rely upon long-term, intangible, and visionary arguments that are much more difficult to assess. This essay argues that humans will not reach Mars on the power of peripheral arguments about science, national pride, or technological spin-offs. Advocates of a human program need to articulate the core values of human spaceflight and justify their missions accordingly, even if they are difficult to measure.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark have become hallowed explorers in American historical memory. ... more Meriwether Lewis and William Clark have become hallowed explorers in American historical memory. Yet they were relatively unknown figures in the 19th century. This paper argues that Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian explorer who traveled the Americas during the same time period as Lewis and Clark, had a much greater impact on American society and its emerging scientific community.
The word ''exploration'' threads its way through every discussion of human space flight and often... more The word ''exploration'' threads its way through every discussion of human space flight and often headlines national policy statements about the US space agency. Yet this concept, so rooted in our culture, remains remarkably ill-defined. In this paper, we examine various presumptions implicit in the term and its ramifications for federally supported space endeavors. We argue that historical examples of exploration, widely used by policy makers, often make poor models for contemporary space travel. In particular, historical precedents of exploration set up a land-biased view of discovery, a restriction which impedes full expression of the Vision for Space Exploration and its possible scientific returns. These same precedents also set up a view of discovery that is biased toward in situ human presence, a view that modern technology is rendering increasingly absurd.
In the middle decades of the 19th century, explorers and scientists fell in love with the theory ... more In the middle decades of the 19th century, explorers and scientists fell in love with the theory of the "open polar sea" which claimed that open water existed at the top of the world. Historians have not been kind to proponents of this theory, viewing them as wishful thinkers at best and unscrupulous schemers at worst. These views do not capture the strength of the theory’s arguments or its range of influence. The open polar sea theory’s appeal was multifaceted, sustained not only by wild-eyed optimists and polar enthusiasts but also by serious scholars who felt that it offered the key to a hydrographic
system of the world.
Book Reviews by Michael F Robinson
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Books by Michael F Robinson
Papers by Michael F Robinson
Citation: Robinson, M. (2019). Scientific Travel. In N. Das & T. Youngs (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (pp. 488-503). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316556740.032
system of the world.
Book Reviews by Michael F Robinson
Citation: Robinson, M. (2019). Scientific Travel. In N. Das & T. Youngs (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (pp. 488-503). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316556740.032
system of the world.