New book uncovers the strange and violent actions of Victorian explorers and physical toll on their staff and porters

‘On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration’ reveals the strange, violent and sexual practices of famous explorers of Africa and the Antarctic in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and their reliance on the bodily toil of others for their survival. 

The new perspective from Dr Edward Armston-Sheret, a Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, offers a revelatory look at the personal and professional conduct of explorers such as Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone, Ernest Shackleton, Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Isabella Bird.  

In an extensively researched text, readers can learn of Richard Burton’s tendency to adopt ‘Arab’ dress as a means of disguise leading him to undergo circumcision, as well as using the outfit of a Muslim medic to examine women’s bodies, recounted in racist, sexist, and fetishistic ways while also opening avenues for sexual impropriety otherwise unthinkable in Victorian England.  

Intriguingly, travel afforded Burton and his accompanying wife Isabel opportunities for experimentation, as can be seen in the example of their cross-dressing while travelling the Syrian desert. 

Central to the book is the notion that the expeditions of such explorers were not possible without the labour and suffering of many other people, often exploited through mismanagement and extreme violence.  

One of Stanley’s expeditions required over 600 porters, askari (soldier), and headmen. The rear column of one of his expeditions, because of poor leadership, suffered starvation, disease, and division – with over half of the 270 men having died or deserted.  

Executions and corporal punishment, particularly by flogging, were commonplace, and in one extreme example involved three hundred lashes of a whip administered to a man suspected of desertion.  

Such physical violence was justified by the racist portrayal of black skin as being less sensitive to pain, another aspect of the way explorers disregarded the physical toll of such expeditions on the masses of people who made them possible.  

Dr Armston-Sheret's book is not just a catalogue of misdeeds. As he concludes in one chapter, “more must be done to recognise the extreme acts of physical violence that expedition could involve... but we should avoid writing a history of exploration in which we ignore the agency, discipline and self-control of subordinate expedition members.” 

Such members were crucial for the explorers’ survival and success of expeditions, given the extensive amount of equipment they were required to carry, their role in establishing camps, cooking, knowledge of the local area, protection, and sometimes life-saving medical care – often performed by women. 

“To reassert control explorers often emphasized their mental determination in their narratives. For instance, Speke later wrote that he ‘thought nothing but the march’ despite his physical collapse... it is hard to reach such descriptions of total bodily dependence without suspecting that, in the field if not on the page, those who cared for explorers had significant power over their bodies (and lives) of expedition leaders.”  

Dr Armston-Sheret talks about the book and research on a recent episode of the science, history and exploration podcast, 'Time to Eat Dogs'. 

‘On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration’ is available to purchase via University of Nebraska Press.