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ABSTRACT
In the early nineteenth century, Suez was not the only possibility for a shortcut between Britain and its rapidly expanding Indian empire. Serious consideration was also given to a route via Mesopotamia. In 1835, the lavishly funded Euphrates Expedition set out to determine the suitability of the river for steam navigation, assess the political complications, and complete maps and natural historical surveys. The Expedition began with an extraordinarily laborious overland transport through Syria, hauling two dismantled steamships across the desert, a process resisted by both Ottoman and Egyptian authorities. Things did not become much easier upon reaching the river, and a series of calamities ensued, most significantly the complete loss of one of the steamers in a hurricane. In this article, I use the Euphrates Expedition to consider various notions of ‘failure’ and breakdown in the histories of empire, science and exploration. In terms of everyday expeditionary practice, the Expedition might be seen as a series of cascading failures, from cross-cultural negotiation to technological limits, and it was in another sense an imperial ‘failure’ as ‘the route to India that never was.’ At the same time, this article interrogates a tension in the historiography around what it means to tell the story of imperial exploration and surveying as one of limits, confusion, vulnerability and dependency – or ultimately ‘failure’ – given the often pervasive legacies and consequences of these activities for the places and peoples surveyed.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Parry, “Steam Power,” 148; 155
2 Parry, Promised Lands, 130.
3 Cole, “Precarious Empires,” 75.
4 Schaffer, “Easily Cracked.”
5 Braun, “Introduction”; Gooday, “Re-writing”; and Lipartito, “Picturephone.” See also Marsden and Smith, Engineering Empires.
6 Driver and Martins, “Shipwreck and Salvage,” 541.
7 Craciun, Writing Arctic Disaster.
8 Barczewski, Heroic Failure, 13.
9 Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces, 5.
10 Ibid., 267–8.
11 Chesney, March 29, 1835, British Library [hereafter BL], IOR/L/MAR/C/573, f277–8.
12 Chesney to Hobhouse, April 17, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f158.
13 [Helfer] Nostiz, Travels. See also, Naumann, Euphrat Queen.
14 Ellenborough to Chesney, January 24, 1835, BL, IOR/L/MAR/C/573, f158.
15 Bayly, Empire & Information. See also Fisher, Outskirts.
16 Guest, The Euphrates Expedition. Jonathan Parry’s Promised Lands provides valuable context for British imperial politics around the Expedition, but only touches briefly on the Expedition itself. For the botanical material collected, see Edmondson, “The Flora and Fauna.” For Ottoman perspectives on the Expedition, see Akbulut, Hindistan. Looking further back, a 1960s dissertation deals with the Expedition in considerable detail: Khan, “British Policy in Iraq.” Israeli diplomat Eliahu Elath similarly completed a dissertation, which was expanded and published (in Hebrew): Elath, Britain’s Routes to India. Meanwhile, in the mid-twentieth century, Dorsey Jones presented the Expedition as a re-evaluation of a ‘lost’ imperial endeavour: Jones, “Chesney Chose the Euphrates Route.”
17 Goren, Dead Sea Level, 64.
18 See Martin and Armston-Sheret, “Off the Beaten Track?”
19 Report from the Select Committee.
20 Guest, The Euphrates Expedition, 7; and Goren, Dead Sea Level, 43–4.
21 “Review – Steam Navigation to India,” 97.
22 See Hoskins, British Routes; and Ingram, In Defence.
23 See for example Peacock, “Memorandum Respecting the Euphrates Expedition,” January 13, 1836, IOR/L/MAR/C/574, f9–12. See also Parry, Promised Lands, 146–67.
24 See Blyth, The Empire of the Raj; Onley, The Arabian Frontier; and Darwin, The Empire Project.
25 Clarke and Carnac to Hobhouse, January 14, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f234.
26 Ibid., f234–5. See also “The Euphrates Expedition – Reprint of The Calcutta Courier,” 10.
27 See for example, Adas, Machines.
28 Headrick, The Tools, 17.
29 Kubicek, “Shallow-Draft Steamboats,” 86; 89. See also Dewey, Steamboats, 2; and Sivasundaram, “The Oils of Empire.”
30 For the results of this, see Report from the Select Committee. See also Headrick, The Tools, 17–42.
31 Chesney, Narrative, 144–5.
32 Report from the Select Committee, 4.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 70.
35 Guest, The Euphrates Expedition, 35.
36 Chesney, Narrative, 210. For more on Egyptian perspectives see Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 298–9.
37 Chesney, Narrative, 173.
38 Ibid., 172–3.
39 For more on Ottoman perspectives, see Akbulut, Hindistan.
40 Estcourt to Hobhouse, December 16, 1835, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f123.
41 Chesney, Narrative, 210.
42 Ibid.
43 Estcourt to Hobhouse, December 16, 1835, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f121.
44 Chesney, Narrative, 204–5.
45 Chesney to Hobhouse, February 27, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f130.
46 Charlewood, Journal, Vol 1, BL, Mss Eur F711/1, f39.
47 Chesney, Narrative, 194–5.
48 Ibid., 196.
49 Ibid., 187.
50 Charlewood, Passages, 30–1.
51 Ibid.
52 Chesney, Narrative, 197.
53 Ibid., 177.
54 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 1, 95.
55 Chesney to Hobhouse, March 18, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f142.
56 Chesney, Narrative, 223.
57 Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces, 157.
58 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 1, 214.
59 Chesney, Narrative, 203.
60 Chesney to Grant, October 16, 1836, BL, IOR/F/4/1701/68745.
61 Ibid. See also Chesney, March 29, 1835, BL, IOR/L/MAR/C/573, f294.
62 Chesney, Narrative, 239.
63 Ibid.
64 Chesney to Hobhouse, April 30, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f162. See also Charlewood, Journal, Vol 3, BL Mss Eur F711/3, f108–10.
65 Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces, 157.
66 Dritsas, Zambesi, 108.
67 Hobhouse to Clarke and Carnac, February 19, 1836, BL, IOR/L/MAR/C/573, f56–7.
68 Chesney, March 29, 1835, BL, IOR/L/MAR/C/573, f292–4.
69 Ibid., f295.
70 Ibid., f292.
71 Ibid., f293.
72 See among others Schaffer et al., The Brokered World; and Driver, “Hidden Histories.”
73 Chesney, Narrative, 69.
74 Chesney, Reports, 57.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid., 57–8.
77 Chesney, Narrative, 261.
78 Ibid.
79 Charlewood, Journal, Vol 3, BL, Mss Eur F711/3, f157.
80 Chesney to Hobhouse, September 27, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f223.
81 Ibid.
82 Charlewood, Journal, Vol 3, BL, Mss Eur F711/3, f157.
83 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 2, 18–19.
84 Ibid.
85 See Fisher, Outskirts, 40–7.
86 Chesney, Narrative, 262.
87 Charlewood, Journal, Vol 3, BL, Mss Eur F711/3, f148.
88 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 1, 390.
89 Chesney and Ainsworth, “A General Statement,” 427.
90 Chesney to EIC, September 27, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f372.
91 [Helfer] Nostiz, Travels, Vol 1, 247.
92 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 1, 399–400.
93 Chesney, Narrative, 259.
94 Ibid., 260.
95 For press coverage, see for example BL, IOR Neg 1876/2, f6. For the King’s condolences, see Chesney, Narrative, 272.
96 Canning to Chesney, July 30, 1836, reproduced in Chesney, The Life, 348.
97 Chesney, Narrative, 347.
98 Chesney to Hobhouse, May 28, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f174
99 Hector to Werry, October 15, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f244.
100 Chesney to Hobhouse, February 27, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f128.
101 Chesney, Narrative, 78.
102 Ainsworth appendix in Chesney, Narrative, 497.
103 Chesney, Reports, 46.
104 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 1, 335.
105 Ibid., Vol 1, 336.
106 Sivasundaram, “The Oils of Empire,” 379–80.
107 Chesney to Hobhouse, May 16, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/4, f165.
108 Chesney, Reports, 46.
109 Chesney to Hobhouse, September 27, 1836, Mss Eur F213/5, f221.
110 Ainsworth, Personal Narrative, Vol 2, 62–3.
111 Chesney, Narrative, 290.
112 See Ainsworth in Chesney, The Expedition, Vol 2, 697.
113 Estcourt to Hobhouse, October 29, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f240.
114 Ibid., f240–1.
115 Chesney to Hobhouse, October 3, 1836, BL, IOR/F/4/1701/68745.
116 See Hoskins, British Routes, 176–8.
117 Secretary of Bombay to Chesney, June 28, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f101.
118 Hobhouse to Grant, February 23, 1837, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f258.
119 Hobhouse to Auckland, January 26, 1837, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f176.
120 Dritsas, Zambesi, 190.
121 “The Euphrates Expedition,” The Standard, January 22, 1837, BL IOR Neg 1876/2, f15.
122 Chesney to Hobhouse, May 5, 1837, BL, Mss Eur F213/6, f83.
123 Chesney to Grant, September 1, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f255.
124 Hobhouse to Chesney, November 30, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f103–4.
125 Hobhouse to Auckland, January 26, 1837, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f176.
126 Hobhouse to Chesney, November 30, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f103. For the reports in question, see for example The Times, March 28, 1836, BL, IOR/L/MAR/C/573, f661.
127 Chesney to Hobhouse, October 26, 1836, BL, Mss Eur F213/5, f236.
128 Chesney to Hobhouse, May 5, 1837, BL, Mss Eur F213/6, f83.
129 Ibid.
130 The sinking of the Tigris nevertheless continued to evoke romantic interest. See Richardson, The Loss.
131 Chesney, Narrative; [Helfer] Nostiz, Travels; and Ainsworth, Personal Narrative. Chesney did publish an account in 1850, which was intended to be four volumes, but only the first two on the historical geography of Mesopotamia (rather than the Expedition itself) were ever completed. See Chesney, The Expedition.
132 Keighren et al., Travels into Print.
133 “Report from the Council,” iv–v.
134 See Chesney, The Expedition, Map Vol.
135 Akbulut, Hindistan.
136 Parry, “Steam Power,” 148.
137 Ibid., 156.
138 See Cole, “Precarious Empires”; and Crouzet, “Rivalités et utopies.”
139 Cole, “Precarious Empires,” 76. See also Cole, “Controversial Investments.”
140 Chesney, Report; and Andrew, Memoir. See also Fisher, Outskirts, 35–41.
141 Ainsworth, The Euphrates Valley, 6.
142 See Gooday, “Re-writing”; and Lipartito, “Picturephone.”
143 Harrison, Climates and Constitutions, 224.
144 See for example Satia, “Turning Space into Place”; and Fisher, Outskirts.