Isabella Bird, Rudyard Kipling, and the “bandobast” of East Asian travel

Abstract

ABSTRACTIsabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks (1880) has often been read as a quest-narrative into the unknown interior of Japan, which centres on the resolute individualism of the female travel persona. This essay will instead regard Bird as a representative figure, insofar as (like other contemporary Victorian travellers) she is the beneficiary of newly established networks of trade, transport and communication in South-East Asia. I compare her journey with that of Rudyard Kipling, who undertook a similar Asian version of the Grand Tour in 1889, recounted in From Sea to Sea (1899). Focusing on Kipling’s idea of the “bandobast”, a Hindi word adapted into English to mean “systematic arrangement”, I explore the mutual interdependence of Victorian representations of Japan with other East Asian cultures, particularly China. Instead of contrasting masculine and feminine modes of response, I show how their overlapping itineraries allow engagement with the multicultural cosmopolitanism of the major cities of the region, and examination of the impact of aggressive Western expansionism in the final decades of the nineteenth century.