The recurring “discovery” of Hokkaido and the Ainu: three decades of nineteenth-century British travelogues

IF 0.3 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
John L. Hennessey
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

What is the explorer or scientist to do when rapid advances in technology, communi-cations, and transport leave few truly untouched regions for them to “ discover ” ? This article will explore the case of Europeans and Americans during the second half of the nineteenth century who sought to make a name for themselves by exploring Hokkaido and studying the Ainu, a people indigenous to the Okhotsk region in Northeast Asia. I will argue that despite appearances, a careful reading and comparison of published sources from this period reveals that the Ainu in fact were visited by a signi fi cant number of Westerners and that these “ explorers ” made extensive use of a pre-existing travel infrastructure which expanded over time. I will analyze the diverse strategies that these Westerners combined to sell their travelogues to a British reading public, including emphasizing and exaggerating their supposed “ discoveries, ” claiming important contributions to science, and employing humor and exoticism.
北海道和阿伊努人的反复“发现”:19世纪英国三十年的游记
当技术、通信和运输的快速进步几乎没有留下真正未被“发现”的地区时,探险家或科学家该怎么办?本文将探讨19世纪下半叶的欧洲人和美国人的情况,他们试图通过探索北海道和研究东北亚鄂霍次克地区的土著阿伊努人来扬名立万。我认为,尽管外表如此,但仔细阅读和比较这一时期的公开资料可以发现,事实上,大量西方人访问了阿伊努人,这些“探险家”广泛利用了随着时间的推移而扩大的现有旅游基础设施。我将分析这些西方人向英国读者推销游记的各种策略,包括强调和夸大他们所谓的“发现”,声称对科学做出了重要贡献,以及使用幽默和异国情调。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
46
期刊介绍: Nineteenth-Century Contexts is committed to interdisciplinary recuperations of “new” nineteenth centuries and their relation to contemporary geopolitical developments. The journal challenges traditional modes of categorizing the nineteenth century by forging innovative contextualizations across a wide spectrum of nineteenth century experience and the critical disciplines that examine it. Articles not only integrate theories and methods of various fields of inquiry — art, history, musicology, anthropology, literary criticism, religious studies, social history, economics, popular culture studies, and the history of science, among others.
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