Geopolitics and the Avian Imperial Archive: The Zoogeography of Region-Making in the Nineteenth-Century British Mediterranean

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Mediterranean region emerged as a crucial site for the security of the British Empire route to India and South Asia, especially with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Military stations served as trans-imperial sites, connecting Britain to India through the flow of military manpower, commodities, information, and bodily experiences across the empire from 1850 through 1880. By examining the material remnants of the “avian imperial archive” (avian lists, bird skins, eggs, travel writing), I demonstrate how British military ornithology helped to materialize imaginatively and empirically the British Mediterranean as a transitional region for the physical and cultural acclimatization of British officers en route to and from India and to extend British imperial interests into North Africa. As this article reveals, the production of zoogeography by British military officers in the Mediterranean was coconstituted by imperial military geopolitics.

十九世纪中叶, 地中海区域成为大英帝国通往印度与南亚路径安全中的重要地点, 特别是在 1869 年苏伊士运河开通之后。自 1850 年至 1880 年间, 军事基地提供做为跨帝国的场所, 英国透过横跨整个帝国的军事人力、日用品、资讯与身体经验, 连结至印度。我透过检视 “鸟类帝国档案” 的物质遗迹 (鸟类明细、鸟皮、鸟蛋、旅行纪录), 证明英国的军事鸟类学如何促进想像及经验的英属地中海的具体化, 做为英国官员在身体及文化上适应从英国往返印度途中的过渡区域, 并将英国的帝国利益延伸进北非。如同本文所揭露, 英国军事官员在地中海所生产的动物地理学, 与帝国军事的地缘政治是相互构成的。

A mediados del siglo XIX, la región mediterránea se convirtió en un lugar crucial de seguridad para la ruta del Imperio Británico hacia la India y el sur de Asia, especialmente con la apertura del Canal de Suez en 1869. Entre 1850 y 1880 el Imperio fue servido por estaciones militares que tenían la función de sitios trans-imperiales para conectar a Gran Bretaña con la India a través del flujo de personal militar, mercaderías, información y experiencia. Por medio del examen de lo que sobrevive del “archivo imperial aviario” (listas de aves, pieles de aves, huevos, escritos de viaje), demuestro cómo la ornitología militar británica ayudó a materializar de manera imaginativa y empírica el Mediterráneo británico como una región transicional para aclimatar física y culturalmente a los oficiales británicos en tránsito hacia y desde la India, y para extender los intereses imperiales británicos en África del Norte. Como se revela en este artículo, la producción de la zoogeografía por oficiales militares británicos en el Mediterráneo se constituyó en asociación con la geopolítica militar británica.

Key Words:

• British Empire
• geopolitics
• Mediterranean
• military
• zoogeography

关键词:

• 大英帝国
• 地缘政治
• 地中海
• 军事
• 动物园地理学

Palabras clave:

• Imperio Británico
• geopolítica
• Mediterráneo
• militar
• zoogeografía

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers, as well as Karl Zimmerer and Bruce Braun, for their valuable feedback on my article. I also would like to thank Laura Cameron, Joan Schwartz, David Lambert, David Livingstone, Melissa Shaw, Alan Lester, Robin Doughty, M. G. Sanchez, and Katie Hemsworth for commenting on earlier versions of this article, which was first presented at the “Governmentality and the Production of Calculable Spaces” Association of American Geographers session in Washington, DC, 14–18 April 2010.

Notes

1. Henry Maurice Drummond-Hay (1814–1896), 42nd Royal Highlanders, for example, became the first President of the BOU after serving in Malta and published a piece on the avifauna of the region in the Annals & Magazine of Natural History (1843). He was also part of the survey expedition to Tunis aboard HMS Beacon in 1845. Strickland examined Drummond-Hay's collection of specimens from Malta (Strickland 1850).

2. Many of these initiatives were part of the Cardwell Reforms introduced by the British Army under the Gladstone government between 1868 and 1874. Some of the original military reforms began in the 1830s, with the statistical investigations into military sickness and mortality by Henry Marshall and Alexander Tulloch. Led by Henry Grey, Viscount Howick, the British government invested in sanitary reforms to reduce the loss of military manpower in overseas stations, including the regular rotation of regiments and the designation of the Mediterranean as a strategic site in the imperial military network.

3. For example, in 1856 Britain capitalized on the Commercial Treaty with the Sultan of Morocco, which opened Moroccan ports to the world market “liberal” trade.

4. See Drummond-Hay (1843), Napier (1846), Watkins (1856), Adams (1870), Irby (1875, 1879, 1895), Reid (1871–1890), and Becher (1883, 1889).

5. Richards used the example of Rudyard Kipling's Colonel Creighton as an ideal archival “superman” in his work. Creighton was a British army officer, ethnologist, and spy in the novel Kim. Interestingly, Kipling befriended British military officer Henry Wemyss Feilden (1838–1921), who was a naturalist, explorer, and member of the BOU. Feilden collected hundreds of birds during his military service across empire.

6. Born at Tangier Park, Hampshire, Sclater pursued ornithology at Christ Church, Oxford, under Hugh Edwin Strickland, the inventor of the Strickland Code. He also studied law and was admitted a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. In addition to his scientific endeavors, Sclater became private secretary to his brother George Sclater-Booth, MP (later Lord Basing) in 1874. His sons included William Lutley Sclater (an ornithologist), Captain Guy Lutley Sclater (Royal Navy), and Captain Bertram Lutley Sclater (Royal Engineers).

7. It was at Gibraltar where English naturalist Mark Catesby's (1682–1749) military brother collected birds when stationed there in the 1740s and sent specimens to British naturalist George Edwards, who wrote about bird migration. The Catesby specimens were sketched and published in the 1843 version of William Yarell's A History of British Birds. Gibraltar was also where John White, rector of the garrison in the 1770s, suggested ideas about British bird migration from Africa to Europe based on his collections and observations. These ideas, which were published by his brother Reverend Gilbert White in his bestseller Natural History of Selborne (1788–1789), highlight the ways in which avian landscapes connected Britain to its imperial territories.