PEDER ROBERTS. The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire.

Abstract

The longstanding involvement of European countries in distant, remote, and hostile climes is often taken for granted, and the southern polar region is no exception. Yet in 1895, the International Geographical Congress meeting in London identified Antarctica as “the greatest piece of geographical exploration still to be undertaken.” The challenge was soon answered by, among others, Roald Amundsen from Norway, Erich von Drygalski from Germany, Otto Nordenskjöld from Sweden, and Britons like Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. For such men and their contemporaries, Antarctica represented a global question mark, a space to be explored, an unknown place for conducting pioneering scientific research, a hostile environment offering the ultimate challenge, and real estate for governments and entrepreneurs to control and exploit. Drawing upon critical geopolitical studies by Gearóid Ó Tuathail and Klaus Dodds, Peder Roberts investigates contrasting European conceptions of “what kind of space the Antarctic was.” “For all its unique and sublime majesty and the awe that it inspires in visitors, the Antarctic is a mirror reflecting the values, ambitions, and anxieties of its interlocutors” (pp. 4–5). Despite stressing “the European Antarctic,” Roberts's focus is on Northwest Europe, particularly the roles played by Britain, Norway, and Sweden as interlocutors working separately and cooperatively across state, institutional, and individual levels. Commencing in 1912 with Swedish plans for Antarctic research in cooperation with Britain, the text concludes with the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958) and the Antarctic Treaty of 1959.