The Quest for the Northwest Passage:

Knowledge, Nation and Empire, 1576–1806

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Editor: Frédéric Regard

Empires in Perspective

These essays trace the history of the British search for the northwest passage – the Arctic sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – from the early modern era to the start of the nineteenth century.

Readership

Exploration and Discovery, Anthropology, the British Empire, Early Modern History and Eighteenth-Century Studies

Contents

Introduction: The Northwest Passage from History to Myth –
Sophie Lemercier-Goddard and Frederic Regard
Part I: The Earliest Attempts: Texts and Contexts
1 Arctics of Empire: Hakluyt's Representation of the Arctic in Principal Navigations (1598–1600) – Mary Fuller
2 From Myth to Appropriation: English Discourses on the Straight of Anián – Ladan Niayesh
3 Baffin's Bay or Bylot's Bay? The Narratives of Bylot and Baffin's Voyages (1615–6) as Stories in Distortion – Catherine Bécasse
Part II: Ice and Eskimos: Inventing a New Otherness
4 John Davis, the Quest for the Northwest Passage and the Encountering of Innuit Culture – Mickael Popelard
5 'Any Strange Beast there Makes a Man': Interaction and Identity in the Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher (1576–8) and Henry Hudson (1607–11) – Sophie Lemercier-Goddard
6 Booking a Northwest Passage: Thomas James's Strange and Dangerous Voyage (1633) and its Legacy for Sir John Barrow and his Generation of Arctic Explorers – Ian MacLaren
Part III: The Shift in Methods: Towards Overland Exploration
7 The Anthropology of Curiosity: Hearne as Paradoxical Scientist – Natalie Zimpfer
8 Alexander Mackenzie's Search for the Northwest Passage: The Commercial Imperative – Robert Sayre
10 Illusion – (Self-)delusion: Thomas Jefferson and the Elusive Northwest Passage – Gérard Hugues

Related titles

• The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World
• Arctic Exploration in the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Northwest Passage
• British Narratives of Exploration: Case Studies on the Self and Other
• Explorations of the South Seas, 1756–1792
• Race and Identity in the Tasman World, 1769–1840
• Travels, Explorations and Empires, 1770–1835: Travel Writings on North America, the Far East, North and South Poles and the Middle East

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