Date of Award

Fall 2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History of Science and Medicine

First Advisor

Radin, Joanna

Abstract

This is a dissertation about unpacking packing. It uses the things that British and American explorers packed for their journeys as a lens for understanding how ideas of comfort shaped Anglophone exploration, colonialism, and capitalism in the long nineteenth century. It starts with a group of seemingly mundane objects that were ubiquitous in the packing lists of these explorers, like chocolate, raincoats, and tents. Tracing these objects from raw material to consumer commodity, the dissertation argues that explorers made these items essential for their comfort in “extreme” environments. In doing so, they naturalized concepts of physical and psychological comfort that were in fact grounded in specific norms of bourgeois, Anglophone society. Even as they claimed to be inherently hardy enough to conquer any environment, explorers promoted the idea that white travelers were entitled to particular forms of comfort anywhere in the world. In turn, by using explorers in their advertisements, British and American companies naturalized the idea that exploration, colonialism, and environmental exploitation were necessary to create the goods that constituted a comfortable life. Advertisements featuring romanticized images of explorers not only smoothed over the violence of exploration, but insinuated that such violence was necessary for the creation of a comfortable world for British and American citizens. The material culture examined in this dissertation demonstrates how exploration became an essential part of the commodity capitalism we take for granted today. Chapter one assesses the expedition packing list as a genre, focusing on two examples: the sample packing lists in Francis Galton’s canonical Victorian expedition guidebook The Art of Travel (published in five editions between 1855 and 1872), and a suggested packing list compiled by the leadership of Britain’s Alpine Club in the early 1890s. This chapter examines these lists to uncover the assumptions baked into them. In particular, it argues that packing lists reveal the hidden labor that supported exploration in the long nineteenth century, especially the presence of Indigenous porters and servants who carried the copious gear that allowed white explorers to remain comfortable in the field. Chapter two turns to waterproof rubber clothing. Rubber garments were the product of a chain of colonial exploitation that began in tropical forests where laborers harvested raw latex and ended in urban British factories. On the bodies of explorers however, waterproof rubber clothes were figured as marvels of industrial technology, even as they prompted debates on how to properly insulate white bodies from the surrounding environment while maintaining standards of social propriety. The dissertation then moves to mass-manufactured chocolate – like rubber, a good with origins in brutal colonial labor regimes. The third chapter focuses on two major British confectionary companies – Cadbury’s and J.S. Fry & Sons – and analyzes how both used explorers in advertisements. Through these materials, the chapter interrogates how chocolate fit into discourses of physiology, energy, and labor in nineteenth-century Britain: providing fuel for working bodies at home and explorers’ bodies in the field in the service of promoting national fitness and ideals of normative white masculinity. Chapter four examines London-based pharmaceutical behemoth Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. (BWC), and its Anglo-American co-founder Henry Solomon Wellcome. BWC sponsored expeditions and made exploration-themed advertising the centerpiece of its marketing, while Henry Wellcome himself befriended high-profile adventurers, especially the infamous Henry Morton Stanley. This chapter probes in greater detail the ways that explorers were a resource exploited by capitalists; used to create a sense of trustworthiness and psychological comfort for consumers. Chapter four also demonstrates how advertising used the glamour and celebrity of exploration to not only bolster a company’s credibility, but also to gloss over the violence of colonialism. Chapter five focuses on tents. Through analyzing catalogues from the major American outdoor outfitter Abercrombie & Fitch, this chapter looks at how companies transmitted messages about domestic comforts, homemaking, and civilizational hierarchies to consumers using the language of expeditions. It also teases out the connections between exploration and the recreational camping industry. The dissertation concludes with a brief chapter that connects the explorers of the long nineteenth century to present-day exploration and outdoor recreation. It asks, whose comfort is valued in outdoor spaces? What should we bring with us to an unfamiliar place? How should we engage with “wild” places, knowing how they have been shaped by Western colonialism? Far from being mundane things one can overlook, this dissertation argues that the stuff that nineteenth-century explorers packed illustrates how comfort for some creates discomfort for others, and how exploration was a key part of naturalizing this discomfort in the service of Western capitalism.

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