Exploration Archives and Indigenous History: An Introduction

Since the 1990s, a number of scholars have sought to uncover hidden histories of exploration, as Felix Driver and Lowri Jones have referred to it. Working against a conventional emphasis on the exploits and achievements of the singular heroic explorer, imperial and colonial exploration is recast as a collective enterprise involving a diverse labour force and upon which expeditions were dependent for their progress and success. Various approaches are pursued for writing a more representative history of exploration, such as recuperating from the archives the stories of little- or lesser-known participants; rewriting histories of particular expeditions through the lens of their encounters and interactions with indigenous people; or giving greater prominence to the work of intermediaries of many kinds, including interpreters, brokers, guides, porters and other labourers. The result is a more complex and multivocal account of the practices and politics of European exploration, the social and historical contexts in which it occurred, and the relationships, networks and institutions it created and on which it depended.