Edward Armston-Sheret's "On the Backs of Others"

Edward Armston-Sheret is the Alan Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History at the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration, and reported the following:

On page 99 of my book, readers will discover two new things about the history of exploration. First, I examine the contributions of working-class naval sailors to meteorological research in Antarctica on Robert Falcon Scott’s final expedition (1911–13). I highlight the contributions of two men: Able Seaman Harry Dickason and Petty Officer Frank Browning to the scientific work of the expedition’s northern party.

Second, readers will learn about the use of violence by African explorers, including Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone. Both men used force to exert control on their expeditions Explorers held somewhat different attitudes to such violence. Stanley, for example, boasted about it to portray himself as an authoritarian commander, while other explorers often edited such incidents out of their published accounts.

These two examples do effectively summarise the central argument of my book. On the one hand, they show how Victorian and Edwardian explorers depended on the skills and labour of people often overlooked within mainstream histories of exploration. On the other hand, the page illustrates how such people were poorly treated by expedition leaders.

Page 99 also shows some of the complexities of writing about such individuals. Throughout the book, I wanted to try to bring to life the experiences and contributions of the often- overlooked people who made British expeditions possible. At some points this involved focusing on their agency and autonomy. Yet I also found it vital to write about the oppression and violence that some explorers carried out.

One thing I really learned in writing this book was that power relations often changed over the course of an expedition. For instance, they could be affected by the unexpected illness or injury of an expedition leader. Their control over expeditions was only partial. But they often sought to assert control by writing about their journeys in certain ways. The complex relationship between exploration and power is something I return to throughout the book and is a major theme in page 99.

Visit Edward Armston-Sheret's website.

--Marshal Zeringue