Last Blank Spaces

Greg Blyton

doi:10.5204/ijcis.v9i2.139

Abstract

Quality research, innovative and provocative. American historian Dane Kennedy’s The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia delivers a carefully written comparative history of British exploration that challenges romantic conceptualisations of explorer and Indigenous relations in the nineteenth century. The very title ‘The Last Blank Spaces’ conjures up images of terra nullius. The final frontiers in British exploration of two vast continents, an emptiness “to advance imperial agendas, to pre-empt political rivals, to inspire patriotic pride, to discover natural resources, to promote commercial interests and further humanitarian objectives” (p. 60). The Last Blank Spaces fits into a genre of Indigenous, colonial ethnography when the British explorer is the central character and the Indigenous person is a support, but the book differs from conventional Western accounts. Kennedy writes that it is a book that “traces the development of exploration from an idea to a practice, from a practice to an outcome, and from an outcome to a myth” (p. 23).

Highlights

The Last Blank Spaces fits into a genre of Indigenous, colonial ethnography when the British explorer is the central character and the Indigenous person is a support, but the book differs from conventional Western accounts
The Last Blank Spaces is a strong “rebuttal to [sic] the nostalgic view of African and Australian exploration” of imperial histories, which portray European explorers as “autonomous agents whose achievements are derived from their personal reservoirs of will and courage” and “ignore the evidence of their dependence on indigenous intermediaries” (p. 268)
In the field of exploration, a reality exists that rejects the romanticism of the intrepid and heroic, European explorer and the obedient, subservient, Indigenous support

Summary

Introduction

Book Review: The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia American historian Dane Kennedy’s The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia delivers a carefully written comparative history of British exploration that challenges romantic conceptualisations of explorer and Indigenous relations in the nineteenth century. An important inference from The Last Blank Spaces is a notion that knowledge held by British explorers during an expedition was often inept and limited.

Results

Conclusion