“The universal topics of all companies”: exhibiting exploration and the voyages of James Cook

Abstract

Writing in 1777, Edmund Burke felt as if “the great map of mankind [was] unroll’d at once”. Voyages of exploration – or more precisely their various results in the form of objects collected, images produced, and the cultural products they inspired – were crucial conduits for presenting the wider world to people in late eighteenth-century Britain. And they appeared in a variety of contexts. The collecting activities of travellers introduced the material cultures of various Pacific Island, American, and Australasian societies to British people; the paintings of voyage artists adorned the walls of influential art exhibitions; lavishly illustrated official travel narratives and cheaper, more popular accounts were eagerly anticipated by the reading public; and audiences were exposed to narratives of exploration in theatres, panoramas, and music halls. And with objects such as the hand-held terrestrial globes that were so fashionable in the period, it was even possible to carry the story of exploration and Britain’s maritime engagement with the wider world in one’s pocket. With its Enlightenment ideals, its discourse of rational scientific enquiry, and its implied mastery of the seas, maritime exploration seemed to parallel Britain’s growing imperial power and economic and political dominance. This article considers how displaying the material, visual, scientific, and intellectual results of exploration to the public in a variety of contexts contributed, in a large measure, to the exhibiting of empire and a developing sense of Britain’s relations with the world in the period.

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ORCID for John Mcaleer: orcid.org/0009-0008-6971-7997

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