Isabella Bird

Isabella Bird was one of the most intrepid and adventurous travellers of the Victorian era. Between 1854 and 1900, she travelled the globe, overcoming poor health and spending "far too many nights in flea-ridden inns". In a century when women were supposed to keep to the sidelines, she went off to dangerous places and wrote a series of successful books about her adventures.

In her early twenties she travelled alone through the United States, then spent the following decades exploring Persia, Japan, Tibet, Morocco, and in her sixties one last great adventure to the Yangtze Valley and the mountain regions of northwest China. She covered a wide field: geography, flora, fauna, trade and the habits and customs of dress of people, including their superstitions and beliefs. Her accounts of China ranged from the etiquette of getting in and out of a sedan, to the 'mannerless, brutal, coarse, insolent, conceited, cowardly roughs of Chinese towns' who lived 'in a state of filth, among odours which no existing word can describe'.

An exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society brings together some of Bird's photographs and drawings with the work of Kiyonori Kanasaka, a geographer and photographer based in Kyoto, Japan, who re-traced her journeys over five continents. OK, it ends on March 12 but hopefully part of the collection will remain on the RGS site.

In November 1892 Bird became the first female Fellow of the RGS, one of 22 women to be elected as Fellows in the following months. However, this innovation in the society's 62-year history provoked an extended salvo of protest from a small but determined group of men, many of them Admirals. One feared the venerable institution would be reduced to the level of "the tea-party and garden-party institutions". On July 3 1893, the resolution that "Ladies are eligible as ordinary Fellows" was put before a Special General Meeting and defeated. The women already admitted were to remain as such but no more were to be elected. The following leader appeared in the Guardian on July 4 1893:

(click to enlarge)

Women were finally admitted almost 20 years later in November 1913. There's a short film about Bird on the National Library of Scotland site.

Congo Free State

Travelling back to work after visiting the Hidden Histories exhibition, I spotted a letter in the Guardian drawing attention to the fact that "Today marks 100 years since the Archbishop of Canterbury led the great Congo demonstration that met on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall to call for justice in the Congo Free State."

The Congo Free State was a private colony set up by King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo basin in the 1880s. For nearly 25 years the country was looted for its natural resources and became notorious for the way the locals were killed or mutilated in a brutal system of slave labour. Meanwhile, Leopold amassed a huge personal fortune.

Apart from the fact that the Royal Geographical Society is just around the corner from the Albert Hall, it is worth mentioning that the exhibition doesn't shy away from the ethics of exploration and Henry Morton Stanley's involvement with the Congo.

Following his success in 'finding' David Livingstone, in 1871, Stanley, the journalist, reinvented himself as an effective explorer discovering and charting central Africa's lakes and making a horrendous journey from east to west Africa. He was then employed by Leopold to help establish the new state and while he may not have been responsible for the horrendous crimes, Stanley's association with it was to leave his reputation severely tarnished.

As an aside, what went on in the country was fictionalised in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, centred on the evil trader Mr Kurtz, although there is debate as to whether or not this was modelled on Stanley.

One of those calling for justice in the Congo was the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as can be seen in this Manchester Guardian report from November 1 1909.

Hidden Histories of Exploration

The Hidden Histories of Exploration exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) highlights the role of 'local' people in many of the great expeditions of the past. As Felix Driver, one of its researchers, has said "There's something about exploration which encourages an emphasis on the lone heroic explorer. We want to change the perspective and look at who the explorers depended on."

For example, naturalists such as Alfred Russel Wallace relied on indigenous collectors to gather materials in the field, the knowledge of native inhabitants was essential when making maps, while almost every kind of expedition relied on local manpower to cart equipment across deserts, up mountains etc. Even David Livingstone, perhaps the most famous of the 'lone travellers', had support while tramping around the jungles of Central Africa.

Exhibits include images of exploration since 1800 such as paintings by Thomas Baines (1820-1875), photographs, and documentary film footage from the 1922 Everest Expedition. The latter, in particular, provides a fascinating glimpse of Tibetan life, as well as shots of the climbers pretending to enjoy their yak butter tea. To make this film though, John Noel, needed eight Sherpas to assist him.

This idea of exploration being more than just the lone European explorer was something I tried to reflect in Those Who Dared. This was easier said than done with most reports usually concentrating on British adventurers. However, I did manage to find a few pieces such as a feature on Nain Singh, the famous pundit, from 1903. Pundits were native surveyors used by the British to map areas in the Himalaya, and particular Tibet, that were out of bounds to Europeans. Often disguised as traders, they would conceal sextants in specially designed secret pockets and hide their results in Tibetan Prayer wheels, which were supposed to contains strips of paper with prayers written on them.

The exhibition runs until December 10 2009. An interview with Felix Driver can be read here.