Imagining the Northwest Passage
Hello! Long time no see. What excuse do I have for the dearth of posting? Well, I’ve been at sea, rather literally. I’ve spent the summer working on a charter sailing ship in the Netherlands, something which is both the fulfilment of several lifelong dreams, and extremely non-conducive to researching and writing. But I’ve got a rare free evening without guests onboard, and have been in the mood for some tapping away. This is more or less a written transcript of a talk I gave at Terror Camp 2022, the online fan conference for AMC’s The Terror and the Franklin Expedition in general. With Terror Camp 2023 coming up, I thought I’d wrangle my hemming and hawing from last year into something readable.
That said, away we go!
Perhaps you had one as well: an assigned reading for a college course that made you go completely nutter butter bananas. A journal article that stuck in your brain, a thinkpiece that changed your perspective, a book that remains on your shelf to this day. Benedict Anderson’s “Census, Map, Museum” is one of those for me: an excerpt from his 1983 book Imagined Communities. Anderson was a historian and political scientist, and Imagined Communities is an investigation into the origins of nationalism. The portion I was assigned lays out a framework for understanding imperial control of distant territories. The basic idea is these three institutions or tools: the census, the map, the museum. Right what it says on the tin. Anderson looks at how these tools were used by European colonial states in Southeast Asia to build nationalist narratives around themselves and build and solidify their spheres of power. It’s a very specific context, and Anderson even says that he doesn’t have the background to confidently expand the idea into other regions, so obviously what I’ve decided to do is really go all in on unspeakable hubris by Expanding The Idea Into Other Regions: the main object is to take a look at the Northwest Passage and the British Empire’s purpose in finding it, through the lens of this framework. And hopefully it’ll be marginally more interesting than the phrase “through the lens of” makes it sound.
I’ll be using just two of the tools – the map and the museum – and am also going to take another spin on this, because I want to look inwards: How do these institutions also impact how the imperial power views itself?
So. Let’s do everyone’s favorite thing: defining terms. What even are these things.
First up: the map. The map is specifically a European map, meaning not a map of Europe but a map for, by, and of Europeans. In our context, in 1845, that European map is still partially blank, with imperial powers are competing to be the ones who get to fill it in.
The museum is a bit less straight-forward. With the museum I mean something closer to a sense of historical legacy and the creation of a specific narrative of history, not necessarily an actual, physical building housing exhibits and artefacts etc. This is another a deviation from Anderson, and at this point I’m really just clinging to a veneer of using his theory and should probably just admit I’m freestyling. But that’s perfectly acceptable because I remain outside the hallowed halls of any institutions of learning, higher or otherwise, and speak only for myself, beating my drum in the town square and being generally ignored by most rational citizens of good standing. Which means that I am perfectly permitted to say that museum here means the historical narrative, for lack of a better word the “mainstream” view of history.
And none for the census! Why I’m ignoring 33% of Anderson’s framework? The Franklin Expedition was concerned with controlling the space they were travelling to, rather than the native populations they were going to encounter (that’s also happening, of course, but the British Empire has other people for that. Dear oh dear do they have other people for that.) and the census is a way of categorizing and controlling populations, just as the map does for space and the museum for historical narrative.
Let’s return to the map. Again, meaning the Eurocentric map created by European empires.
In 1845, a decent chunk of this map was empty: one such chunk was the Canadian Arctic. In Anderson’s framework, colonial powers’ ability to draw up the map also allows them to create a “new spatial reality” shaped in the image of the so-called “discoverer” – i.e. whoever is drawing the map. Drawing borders, making land claims, naming places – these are all ways of controlling a territory, if not physically with an army, then in the minds of anyone who will subsequently look at the new map. Take a gander at the map today: anywhere you see a ruler-straight line is a sign of control. In most cases former control, but it’s still a scar left by some imposed rule. No natural border is a straight line. And more often than not, it’s white Europeans who imposed that straight line.
The map does not simply mark out what already exists in a space, but rather anticipates something that will soon exist: the state. By mapping the Northwest Passage, the British Empire intended not only to locate a trade route, but also to realize a sphere of control. It’s valuable in a tangible sense to have a map of a quick path across the top of the world, but it’s equally important to be able to say the Northwest Passage: brought to you by Great Britain. It’s a soft power objective, for lack of a better term.
Another important feature on a map is, of course, place names. Look at a map of the Canadian Arctic. The whole thing is scattered with European names- and we know that people lived in these regions long before Europeans got there. They certainly weren’t calling this the Hudson River, that King William Land, and so on and so forth. But by imposing English names on a territory, the empire can start legitimizing its claim to the space. Oh, Britain doesn’t have power in the Canadian Arctic? Why is this called Baffin Bay? Why is this called New Little Wimbleshire Upon New Thames? And of course, place names serve other purposes. They commemorate explorers and create a sense of the familiar in a strange new land, making hopeful settlers more comfortable. But they are also part of a colonial power making itself legitimate by copying itself into a new space. Format painter, but for imperialists. Anderson says, “a map anticipated spatial reality, not vice versa”. As an imperial tool, a map isn’t a reflection of reality, showing what exists, but a “coming soon” advertisement for the colonial reality that the empire is trying to impose.
Let’s hop over to the museum.
When Anderson talks about the museum in his book, he is genuinely talking about museums- museums and monuments. Colonial powers, he says, attach themselves to the relics and monuments of antiquity, enclose and preserve them, and say very clearly to a subjugated population: “if it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t be able to properly tend to this antique legacy. We are now the guardians of this part of history, and we’re taking the reins”. If you control the historical legacy, you can start building your argument for why you also have the right to determine forward trajectory.
The concept of the museum that I want to explore is, again, more a curation of narrative rather than a curation of artefacts, but to the same effect. We all know the old phrase “history is written by the winning side”. And sometimes the winning side is simply the people with the best writers. For an empire particularly, the narrative of total control is a crucial element in maintaining actual control over a region and a people that may be very, very far from the nucleus of power.
I propose that this goes both ways. An imperial power has to demonstrate its control over history to its colonial subjects, but to its domestic ones as well. The nation that rules the waves, the sun that never sets: everyone knows the tropes. The cliches. But these things are cliché for a reason. They are repeated and branded into cultural memory for a reason. The British Empire should be the one to discover the Northwest Passage because discovering things like passages is what the British Empire does- it’s what the British Empire is. In the 19th century, divine right doesn’t quite cut it anymore as a justification for rule, and the empire needs to construct itself and its identity.
Caveat that maybe this whole part hinges on the fact that I’m an American, and all Americans do all day long is construct themselves, so perhaps I’m projecting. But I’m also from a region called New England, and we have just about every city and town name in England around here. Lack of imagination? Or reconstruction of an empire abroad? Both? Both.
To bring this back around to the actual subject at hand, the Franklin Expedition makes an interesting example of the narrative of empire and control because it’s ostensibly a tragedy and a failure on the part of the government and navy, yet Franklin becomes a national figure representative of the struggle of man to master nature. He supports the narrative of Britain ruling the waves, the empire on the cutting edge pushing the boundaries of exploration, even if that exploration demands the ultimate sacrifice. Sometimes the ultimate sacrifice is even better! Lots of people failed to find the Northwest Passage, but by dying in the process, Franklin gets turned into a sublime icon to be revered. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield…we all know the tune. Look no further than your friend and mine Robert Falcon Scott for the classic example of heroic failure. The English in particular love the stuff. There’s a reason why I once drunkenly stated that Gareth Southgate would have gotten scurvy on a polar expedition and all my friends just sagely nodded.
So how to make Franklin’s failure a successful part of the narrative? Well, it needs to be tidied up. It needs to be controlled. What happened to the expedition? The answer has to be the right one, which doesn’t necessarily mean the true one. The perfect example of this is the reception John Rae was given when he returned from his Franklin search with less-than-appetizing answers: fellow searchers Francis Leopold McClintock and Robert McClure were both knighted for their efforts in the Arctic, but when Rae came back saying that the expedition ended in cannibalism, he was shunned and Charles Dickens wrote a Ye Olde Call-Out Post about him. Rae’s findings didn’t fit the idea of what the empire was all about. England’s brave boys certainly weren’t eating each other up there, oh no. That doesn’t paint a positive picture at all. The narrative must be careful constructed: this is the work of the museum as a legitimizing tool of imperialism. With control over a historical narrative, you can construct a story that says everything you want it to about your past and present, and subsequently your future.
And in this sense, the Franklin Expedition was a roaring success. It was a national sensation. How many later explorers did Franklin inspire? How much Canadian coastline was mapped and charted in the search for him and his missing men? (Shout-out the map!) Why does he still stir up so much debate and discussion even 170 years later?
It’s been a somewhat rambling road, but let me attempt a little reach for significance as we used to call it back in the good ol’ five paragraph essay days. If we break things down a bit further, we can say that both these tools are used for controlling the point of view. Whoever draws the map gets to construct the space. Whoever tells the story gets to decide what it says about the people in it.
Now the question I’d like to pose is: did the British Empire use these tools successfully? Again, I think that the very fact we’re still talking about the Franklin Expedition points to Yes. Franklin still casts a large cultural shadow for a man who comparatively achieved rather little. But when you think of the Northwest Passage, you think of Franklin, and mostly what he did there was die – and here is where I will use up my single legally permitted mention of Roald Amundsen. That’s the price of Brexit. Under EU law you used to be able to move unlimited Roald Amundsens over the border but things have changed now and I only get ONE – yet the plinth of Franklin’s statue in London states that he discovered the Northwest Passage. But Franklin didn’t discover the Northwest Passage, my boy Roald did! Or maybe John Rae did depending on your definition but whatever! We can argue that later! The point is that the Franklin myth is bigger and better than all the rest. Because they all died? Yeah. Because it’s a cool mystery? Yeah. And also because the British Empire is, or at least was, very good at forging a narrative to suit its purposes and sense of identity? Extremely yeah! Franklin was huge in the Victorian consciousness. His ever-active wife Jane Franklin was incredibly successful in creating the myth of her husband and his ultimate sacrifice. The noble failure, touching the sublime. There’s beauty in the horror, there’s something to be admired in the tragedy. And while modern views may have taken more of a turn for the negative, the expedition continues to have a lasting legacy. Good, bad…compelling no matter which way you slice it. At least I presume you’re compelled, dear reader, or I think you may be in the wrong class.
So of course the search for the Northwest Passage had huge economic incentives: just think about all those spices. Everyone loves spices. But I think saying “finding the Northwest Passage was an economic investment” is only looking at part of the story. The prestige of being able to draw in the map and to add to the legacy of Britain as a sea-faring empire right up on the edge of the savage periphery, exploring and discovering and pushing its borders ever further, are power objectives that cannot be discounted, and the Franklin Expedition was a vessel for both in its original intent and its aftermath.
To quote Anderson for the last time: “the colonial state imagined its dominion – the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry”. And it’s just that. An imagining. The Victorians were aware that absolute political control of a territory far overseas was a highly fallible goal. There’s this quite interesting piece called The Imperial Archive by Thomas Richards, and one of the things he argues is that the Victorians turned to control over knowledge of a territory: over the perception thereof. Anderson’s map and the museum are institutions that, when handled by an aggressive imperial power, become methods of controlling perception. And of course, they did control territory physically as well. That is very much something they did. I am in no way trying to downplay or pretend that British colonial aspirations weren’t completely and horrendously blood-soaked. But the concept of controlling perception of a thing is an important aspect of imperial control, is also something to be considered when talking about imperial aspirations, and I think taking the map and the museum out for a spin is a good way of beginning that consideration, both in general and when thinking about why the Franklin Expedition continues to occupy so much space in cultural memory, particularly for those of us who find ourselves drawn so magnetically towards the poles.