Masters of All They Surveyed

Masters of All They Surveyed
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 340
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0226081214
ISBN-13 : 9780226081212
Rating : 4/5 (212 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Masters of All They Surveyed by : D. Graham Burnett

Download or read book Masters of All They Surveyed written by D. Graham Burnett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicling the British pursuit of the legendary El Dorado, Masters of All They Surveyed tells the fascinating story of geography, cartography, and scientific exploration in Britain's unique South American colony, Guyana. How did nineteenth-century Europeans turn areas they called terra incognita into bounded colonial territories? How did a tender-footed gentleman, predisposed to seasickness (and unable to swim), make his way up churning rivers into thick jungle, arid savanna, and forbidding mountain ranges, survive for the better part of a decade, and emerge with a map? What did that map mean? In answering these questions, D. Graham Burnett brings to light the work of several such explorers, particularly Sir Robert H. Schomburgk, the man who claimed to be the first to reach the site of Ralegh's El Dorado. Commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society and later by the British Crown, Schomburgk explored and mapped regions in modern Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana, always in close contact with Amerindian communities. Drawing heavily on the maps, reports, and letters that Schomburgk sent back to England, and especially on the luxuriant images of survey landmarks in his Twelve Views in the Interior of Guiana (reproduced in color in this book), Burnett shows how a vast network of traverse surveys, illustrations, and travel narratives not only laid out the official boundaries of British Guiana but also marked out a symbolic landscape that fired the British imperial imagination. Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated, Masters of All They Surveyed will interest anyone who wants to understand the histories of colonialism and science.


Masters of All They Surveyed Related Books

Masters of All They Surveyed
Language: en
Pages: 340
Authors: D. Graham Burnett
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2000 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Chronicling the British pursuit of the legendary El Dorado, Masters of All They Surveyed tells the fascinating story of geography, cartography, and scientific e
Mapping the Country of Regions
Language: en
Pages: 321
Authors: Nancy P. Appelbaum
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-05-18 - Publisher: UNC Press Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The nineteenth century was an era of breathtakingly ambitious geographic expeditions across the Americas. The seminal Chorographic Commission of Colombia, which
New Spaces of Exploration
Language: en
Pages: 320
Authors: Simon Naylor
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-12-18 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For many the dawn of the twentieth century ushered in an era where the world map had few if any blank spaces left to discover. The age of exploration was suppos
L'Amérique Méridionale: The Map That Shaped Brazil in the 18th Century
Language: en
Pages: 360
Authors: Junia Ferreira Furtado
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-09-23 - Publisher: BRILL

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores how the origins of Brazil’s modern borders can be traced to the cartography of the Americas produced by the eighteenth-century French carto
Hunting for Empire
Language: en
Pages: 202
Authors: Greg Gillespie
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-11-01 - Publisher: UBC Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Hunting for Empire offers a fresh cultural history of sport and imperialism. Greg Gillespie integrates critical perspectives from cultural studies, literary cri