The Voyage Of The Beagle Summary

Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle

A modern reader might be surprised to find that travel writings of the 18th century, books intended for the general public, featured specific scientific terms and precise descriptions of landmarks, species and resources. But how did it happen that “sentiment, imagination, and the graces have been banished” (Voltaire, Letter to Cideville) from 18th century literature? In her article “Science, planetary consciousness, interiors” author Mary Louise Pratt argues that the change in travel writing in the 18th century promoted a new type of planetary consciousness, thus triggering a shift in European colonial policies. In her subsequent article “Narrating the anti-conquest”, she argues that as travel writing

Authors of travel writing displayed an impassionate attitude toward the land, perceiving it as an object of study, rather than as an object of inspiration. Thus, land often became impersonalized, seen in terms of its resources and geological and ecological characteristics. The “character of a region [and the] general idea of the good land” (Narrating, 48), present in pre-Linnaean writing (Kolb), were replaced with the image of impersonal (Sparrman, Paterson), improve-able (Barrow) land. Pratt claims that in anti-conquest writing the land does not seem to incite any feelings in the authors because they never speak of it in aesthetic terms (fine, pleasant), but rather in terms of its resources (“well watered”, “well wooded” – Narrating, 59). With Darwin, land descriptions differ from post-Linnaean writing. In Voyage of the Beagle, the landscape is often impersonalized, the reader given a surplus of details about its exact geographical position, the weather conditions in the region, and the natural resources. However, unlike the “collective moving eye on which sights/sites [merely] register” (Narrating, 59), Darwin does not restrict himself to just describing places. As is obvious throughout his narrative, he is constantly seeking explanations for the nature of places and

Darwin, as an anti-conquest writer, does perceive land and cultures with such eyes in his narrative. However, he is not restricted to them. As an anti-conquest writer of the 19th century, Darwin allows the perspective of the eyes of improvement and understanding in his narrative. Whether compassionate or denouncing, admiring or directly neglecting, Darwin’s attitudes toward people can only be understood in the context of his belief in the need for improvement, enlightenment, and civilization. Therefore, Darwin is not a purely anti-conquest writer. His compassion, his tendency toward explication instead of mere registration, his attitude of improvement and belief in the “philanthropic spirit of the British nation” (Voyage of the Beagle, 376) break the frames of Pratt’s definition of 18th century anti-conquest writing. With 19th century Darwin, 18th century anti-conquest writing evolves in a new type of travel