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Elevation and emotion: Sven Hedin's mountain expedition to Transhimalaya, 1906–1908

2020; Wiley; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/1600-0498.12298

1600-0498

Staffan Bergwik,

Historical Influence and Diplomacy

CentaurusVolume 62, Issue 4 p. 647-669 SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLEOpen Access Elevation and emotion: Sven Hedin's mountain expedition to Transhimalaya, 1906–1908 Staffan Bergwik, Corresponding Author Staffan Bergwik staffan.bergwik@idehist.su.se orcid.org/0000-0002-5373-5145 Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Correspondence Staffan Bergwik, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Email: staffan.bergwik@idehist.su.seSearch for more papers by this author Staffan Bergwik, Corresponding Author Staffan Bergwik staffan.bergwik@idehist.su.se orcid.org/0000-0002-5373-5145 Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Correspondence Staffan Bergwik, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Email: staffan.bergwik@idehist.su.seSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 September 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12298Citations: 1 Funding information: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant/Award Number: P17-0596:1 AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract The role of verticality in 19th- and 20th-century fields of knowledge-making has received increased attention among historians of science. Correspondingly, cultural historians have explored the growing importance of a bird's eye view in popular culture throughout the 1800s. The elevated positions created in science and public discourse have both contributed to a modern ability to see the bigger picture. This article investigates how the Swedish geographer Sven Hedin produced an elevated view through his expedition to the Karakoram mountain range in Tibet between 1906 and 1908. Focusing on his travel narrative as a place where the elevated view was created and defined, I interpret Hedin's expedition as a part of initiatives in geography, at the turn of the 20th century, to find a vertical means of representing the world. In particular, this article demonstrates how the overview, both literally and metaphorically, became an ideal in Hedin's narrative. Moreover, I argue that Hedin's elevated view contributed to an emotional economy of elevation. The alleged rational gaze of the overview was combined with emotions and experiences of cold climate, thin mountain air, vertigo, and awe. This article indicates how affective states were included in the collection of data, even when they threatened to blur the sensorium of the observer. Third, through the analytical lens of an emotional economy of elevation, I argue that Hedin's elevated view mimicked the affective language of a Humboldtian tradition, while at the same time it contributed to the popular culture of the late 19th century with its fascination for ascents and bird's-eye views. As a European celebrity, Hedin reached massive crowds and contributed to the establishment of the outlook from above as a crucial technique for understanding nature. 1 INTRODUCTION The Ding-La was the loftiest pass geographer Sven Hedin (1865–1952) traversed in Tibet. Located at 19,308 ft (5,885 m), it offered opportunities to make observations from the "roof of the world."1 Nothing hid the view, and the geographer had "a comparatively clear view of the general habitus of the Tibetan landscape and of its most striking characteristics."2 From Tibetan passes, the traveler got the "most graphic impressions of the mountain country as a whole"; from them, he "dominated" large areas without being preoccupied with "too much details."3 While the view generated geographical knowledge, it was not experienced with the scholarly intellect alone. It made the geographer astounded, mute, and dizzy. Hedin claimed that elevated viewpoints were even formidable enough to challenge the power of description: "No language on earth contains words forcible enough to describe the view."4 Outside Sweden, Sven Hedin is a largely forgotten geographer in European history, but he was a well-known explorer in the early 20th century. Leaving India for Tibet in 1906, his career reached its culmination upon his return to Europe in 1909. A British newspaper dubbed him the Henry Stanley of Asia and pointed to his monumental success.5 Existing biographies of Hedin have described his Asian journeys and his political engagements, producing narratives of an explorer with an irrepressible thirst for adventure, a great sense of national pride, and a sometimes distorted self-image.6 While there is certainly some truth to that, I will not try to characterize the individual or his biography. My aim is rather to recontextualize Hedin's mountain expedition to Tibet, and read it as part of a broader history of elevation at the turn of the 20th century. While neither his movement nor his gaze was strictly vertical, Sven Hedin's expedition to Tibet was marked by the ambition to move upwards to look down on the landscape. Ideas about the epistemological quality of high places in several fields of science have received increased scholarly attention over the last decade. In several studies, mountains, balloons, and airplanes have been addressed as knowledge-making places and practices.7 In conversation with this research, I ask, what and how did a geographer in the early 20th century see from above? I aim to investigate the elevated view presented in Hedin's publications describing his journey in Tibet. The Swede gave meaning to and managed the content of the outlook from up high through his travel narrative, which was aimed at a European public. This article, then, is about verticality as a culturally disseminated and popular perspective at the turn of the 20th century. First, I will argue that Sven Hedin's journey to Tibet was part of a historical process in which geographers created elevated viewpoints and made them meaningful as knowledge-making practices. Historian Fraser MacDonald has discussed how techniques to create vertical images of earth developed remarkably in the late 19th century.8 Indeed, according to Marie-Claire Robic, the view from above became a dominant form of visualization in geography.9 Hedin traveled at a time when the blank spaces on the Western map of the world were all but gone. As one of the last representatives of a 19th-century age of discovery, he partook in a broader shift from mapping practices along the ground to techniques of vertical exploration of remote landscapes. As I will demonstrate, Hedin attributed particular meaning to the idea and practice of overview and described it both literally and metaphorically. Moreover, the overview was laden with an imperial logic of mastering landscape at a time of competing national interests in Tibet and Himalaya. In Hedin's worldview, the rational understanding of the mountains, which emanated from the overview, was embodied by the Western explorer. While Hedin carried scientific instruments on his trip, my main concern is not how he measured height or other aspects of the landscape. The source material is discursive and presents overviews to a wide readership. In asking how the overview was presented to the consumers of Hedin's books, I therefore focus more on knowledge dissemination than on knowledge production. The sense of sight had a privileged status in Hedin's descriptions of experiencing the Tibetan landscape, yet the elevated view was also constructed by balancing an ostensibly rational gaze with the emotional impact of high altitude. The geographer saw large areas "perfectly clear," yet he was also struck with awe, struggling to find words to describe the scene. The outlook from up high depended upon, and instigated, a composite experience; it did not only include the modality of sight. Therefore, and second, I argue that Hedin's elevated view contributed to an emotional economy of elevation, specifically related to the creation of geographical knowledge from high places. The idea of an emotional economy of science has been put forth by Paul White to understand the role of feelings in the history of scientific knowledge-making. White argues that an emotional economy of science is "a contentious and flexible system of powers and values" through which we can study the taxonomy, lineage, and effects of emotions. Existing research has displayed how reason and emotion were separated on a rhetorical level in the modern era, while in practice the cognitive and the affective have been co-dependent in the formation of scientific meaning.10 How then did that interdependence play out in the case of Sven Hedin in Tibet? I shall reveal how emotional responses were integral to, and regulated in, the elevated view. While the emotional economy of elevation was negotiated in a community of geographical scholars, it was also, in the words of White, a "dynamic" and "interactive" system.11 Put differently, the geographical discussions about the emotional experiences of vertical viewpoints were located in an array of encounters with elevation in the late 19th century. Accordingly, and third, I argue that the outlook from above presented in Hedin's travel narrative resonated with other experiences of elevation from the turn of the 20th century, and in particular with the sensory context of an expanded visual field. There was a distinct influence from German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt on Sven Hedin, to which I will return. To a large extent, the Swede mimicked a description of awe and the sublime that went back to Humboldt at the turn of the 19th century. In this way, he added to a long-standing tension in relation to mountains, pointed out by Veronica Della Dora, between "the circumscribable and the sublime."12 Importantly, however, by the late 19th century that trope had been transformed into a historically specific context of elevation as attraction. Separating Humboldtian and Romantic renditions of the awe-inducing experiences of elevation from Sven Hedin was a broad, 19th-century development of spectator culture in which elevation played a crucial role. Bird's-eye views proliferated, whether originating in ballooning, world exhibitions, gazing at cities from towers, or seeing panoramas of landscapes. Several media encapsulated the bird's-eye view and transcended scientific, aesthetic, and commercial boundaries.13 The emotional economy of elevation offered a way to address, engage, and enroll the public into experiences of gazing from above. Sven Hedin was an entrepreneur, a geographer, and an adventurer who worked hard to collect financial support for his travels. Throughout his life, he was dependent upon his newspaper articles, books, and lectures being read and attended. Moreover, in offering vertically elevated views, Hedin worked in a setting marked by a new consumer culture. There was a decidedly commercial side to his explorations. Indeed, the emotional economy of elevation was also about money, markets, and the opportunity to sell the view from above. 2 THE PUBLICATIONS: A PLACE FOR THE ELEVATED VIEW Like his predecessor Alexander von Humboldt, Hedin emphasized the importance of tools for measuring distances and altitudes and determining the position of rivers, valleys, and summits.14 The Swede traveled with a collection of chronometers, compasses, barometers, photographic apparatuses and plates, sketchbooks and notebooks, writing materials, and field glasses.15 A caravan of men and animals transported his tools over high mountain passes. Nevertheless, it was in his publications that Hedin described his experiences of seeing from above. In the following, I read his two major publications summarizing his travels as the places where he discussed the meaning and quality of the elevated view and the emotional economy of elevation. A crucial methodological argument is that this discursive material makes the elevated view accessible to historical analysis. As noted by one of Hedin's biographers, Sten Selander, the geographer's words served the same purpose as maps and panoramas: Hedin's travel narrative produced "illustrative word-paintings." The sharpness of detail in images and texts meant that "eventually, a whole image of the landscape of Central Asia emerges."16 The results from Hedin's journey were presented in Southern Tibet: Discoveries in Former Times Compared with My Own Researches in 1906–1908 and Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet. The two publications differ in their narrative styles: Southern Tibet envisioned a scholarly audience with its detailed reports of data about geographical features; Hedin described it as "the scientific report" of his journey.17 Published between 1917 and 1923, it has been described as a "monument."18 The nine volumes cover the geography, orography, geology, and hydrography of the area, as well as the work of previous travelers.19 Trans-Himalaya, published in three volumes, was described by the Swede as his "popular work" on the journey. It was written with a broader audience in mind, telling stories of adventures, secluded monks, harsh weather, and wild yaks.20 Southern Tibet was originally published in English, while Trans-Himalaya was first published in Swedish and only later translated into English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, and Russian, among other languages.21 The differing characters of the two publications mirror transformations in geography in the late 19th century. A dominant paradigm was lacking, and influential actors tried to give the disciplinary meaning to the academic field.22 One of the contended issues was the persona of the geographer, balancing between a public explorer and an academic scientist. The debates immersed in the wake of the creation of institutions, publications, conferences, and academic chairs. This institutionalization was a broad European and American undertaking, and while the meetings and periodicals of these institutions were primarily devoted to accounts of scientific explorations, the community of geographers also encompassed publicly renowned travelers.23 Geographers wanting to create more academic geography leveled criticism against what they considered to be too much public appeal and sensationalism. Distinctions between adventurers and scientific geographers were debated throughout the 19th century.24 Sven Hedin was a representative of geography who managed to operate on the border between science and sensation.25 He was an academically educated geographer who presented his results to geographic societies, published articles in geographic journals, and received honors from geographical institutions across Europe.26 Upon returning from Tibet in February 1909, he presented his discoveries to massive crowds in London, Manchester, Paris, and Berlin, but also to smaller circles of geographers, for instance in the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).27 The Swede became an international celebrity, telling stories that were a "sensation of the time" and attracting interest from notables such as Theodore Roosevelt, Pope Pius X, Emperor Mutsuhito, and Tsar Nicholas II, all of whom wished to meet him after his journey to Tibet.28 The blurred boundary between sober science and sensational discovery was echoed in Hedin's publications. While the geographer himself pointed out the differences between Southern Tibet and Trans-Himalaya, an exaggerated emphasis on the demarcation between them obscures the similarities. Narrative was part of Hedin's scientific apparatus and, despite their differences, both Southern Tibet and Trans-Himalaya contain literary descriptions of viewing the Tibetan landscape from up high. In both works, epistemological and emotional qualities of seeing from above were made explicit. 3 THE MAPPED GLOBE AND VERTICAL EXPLORATIONS It was on August 14, 1906 that Sven Hedin left the town of Leh in Kashmir to embark on a journey, with the ambition of mapping parts of the highlands of Tibet. North of Tsangpo, the upper stream of the Brahmaputra, was a part of the Karakoram mountain range that Hedin claimed had not yet been mapped. "I called it Transhimalaya, because it was on the other side and beyond the Himalaya."29 Accompanied by a caravan of approximately 120 horses and mules, the Swedish geographer crossed the mountains numerous times between 1906 and 1908.30 While acknowledging that several parts of Tibet and the Karakoram range had been traversed before, Hedin maintained that "this elevated part of the earth's crust" had not been mapped thoroughly.31 He pointed to Sir Clements Markham's statement in The Geographical Journal, that "nothing in Asia is of greater geographical importance than the exploration of this range of mountains".32 FIGURE 1Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Sven Hedin in his study at Norra Blasieholmen in Stockholm in 1898. Photographer unknown. Sven Hedin private family album, vol. 1, Sven Hedin photo archives, Stockholm. Reprinted with permission from the Sven Hedin Foundation [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] A self-proclaimed explorer, Sven Hedin was a geographer by training, although he had never been affiliated with a university (Figure 1). The journey to Transhimalaya was his third trip to Asia. At the age of 28, he had made his first visit to the continent—between 1893 and 1897—and traveled the mountains of Pamir, mapped glaciers and lakes, and described two ancient cities along the river Tarim. His second journey lasted from 1899 to 1902 and was focused on hydrological and geological studies of Tarim and "the wandering lake" Lop Nor. Between 1927 and 1935 he traveled to China on a grander expedition, at the head of about 50 Swedish, Chinese, and German researchers. Hedin had studied geography at Uppsala University, as well as under the German Ferdinand von Richthofen at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. In 1892, he received a doctorate in geography from the University of Halle. His studies created a lifelong sympathy for Germany, leading to strong bonds to the Third Reich throughout the 1930s and 1940s. As a personal friend to Adolf Hitler, he gave the inaugural speech at the Berlin Olympic games in 1936.33 Hedin had already voiced "pan-German" sensibilities at the turn of the 20th century, and he remained a strong critic of Russia and the emerging socialist movement. Indeed, he signed onto the geopolitical ideas of other German-trained geographers that Germany had valid imperial claims and constituted a natural entity in Mitteleuropa. The threat against Germany and European stability, according to these geopolitical arguments, came from Russia above all.34 These ideas and alliances have made Hedin infamous in Swedish history. In his native country, he was an advocate for the age-old societal institutions that were faced with changing times. The last Swede to be ennobled, he remained a staunch defender of the Swedish crown at a time of democratization and a growing labor movement.35 Hedin fit the criteria of 19th-century "geography militant" in Joseph Conrad's periodization: adventurous men who mapped the continents and were "sometimes swallowed up by the mystery their hearts were so persistently set on unveiling."36 Although he repeatedly described himself as such, the image of a lone explorer in uncharted territory is more the result of Hedin's rhetoric than of historical reality. The Swede was accompanied in his travels by native assistants. He also received financial and symbolic backing from an elite network of supporters in Sweden, including King Oscar II and the Nobel family.37 Moreover, he was already, at the outset of his journey, a well-known explorer who had repeatedly been in the public eye. Indeed, even when climbing the mountain passes of Tibet, Hedin was connected to the world back home, situating himself at the center of a European context of scholarly activities and popular culture outlets from which he could create and distribute the elevated view to interested audiences. The self-image Hedin crafted in his writings fulfilled core ideals of the late 19th-century age of discovery, for instance in his repeated wish to travel to new landscapes and lay eyes on a peak, a species, or an area for the first time.38 His own intentions in traveling to Tibet, as they emerge in his writings, centered on priority, on being the first to discover unknown lands. He stated that he aimed for the "white spots" of Tibet, and that "I never walk in my own footprints. That is against my religion."39 Of particular importance to him was finding the sources of the Brahmaputra and Indus rivers, and he claimed to have done so in his work. This particular question had been a long-standing problem among geographers. The issue of being first to explore unchartered terrain was contended, as the period of geography militant was drawing to a close. The Swede even described himself as one of the last representatives of a waning geographical paradigm. "The four final decades of the nineteenth century may be called the last phase of the great age of geographical discovery."40 In texts celebrating his achievements, contemporary commentators argued that he was the last of the "great explorers," the likes of which "can never emerge simply because the habitable parts of earth have no more white spots."41 A host of late 19th-century intellectuals and popular authors argued that the globe would soon be fully mapped. Only the poles, the oceans, and "the third pole"—Himalaya—remained to be discovered. In the 1890s in particular, the world seemed to be rapidly shrinking and the unmapped spots on earth depleting. There was a sense of fin du globe.42 Scientific, technological, and political changes created notions about the earth being drawn together, encircled and encapsulated by the modern gaze. Both fears and expectations were manifested concerning "the closure of global space," the idea being that the entire earth had been mapped and that the pieces from all corners of the world had been integrated into a new whole.43 In 1909, French geographer Jean Brunhes argued that "the limits of our cage" had been reached.44 Against this backdrop, turn-of-the-20th-century geography saw attempts to transform the practice of mapping—central to the age of discovery—into technologies that offered a new and literally "vertical" exploration of the planet.45 Indeed, according to Lachlan Fleetwood, the first half of the 19th century saw the rise of the idea that "natural phenomena needed to be mapped in three dimensions." Measuring altitude increasingly became a matter of understanding "global verticality."46 Sven Hedin contributed to this process by producing photographs, hand-drawn panoramas, maps, and—most important for this article—travel narratives that described outlooks from up high. 4 THE CONTEXT OF MOUNTAINEERING According to Peter Hansen, mountaineering is an integral part of the modern identity because it highlights the autonomous individual on the summit, in control of nature. The practices of mountaineering underscored the value of being first, and the sentiment was only possible to cultivate in a modern style of thinking. Mountain peaks engendered notions of "sovereignty, masculinity and modernity."47 It is a commonplace in existing research on mountaineering that, starting in the late 18th century, a reinterpretation of mountains occurred. Mountaineering and the Enlightenment arrived together, and mountains were no longer seen as beyond human control and understanding. Instead, they were increasingly appreciated and viewed as potential objects of rational understanding.48 Later, throughout the 19th century, mountaineering turned into an endeavor undertaken for its own sake, as a battle between man and nature in which the former would conquer summits and peaks. Moreover, mountains started to be envisioned as natural laboratories, and European explorers considered them special places in terms of experience and scientific curiosity.49 This cluster of ideas about man conquering nature is readily present in Hedin's discourse on the elevated view and in the emotional economy of elevation which saw the body as an integral part of mapping Transhimlaya. Nevertheless, I wish to insist on the fact that Hedin does not fit neatly into the history of mountaineering and mountain science. First, he did not strive to break height records, nor did he climb peaks in the Karakoram. Indeed, it would be incorrect to label him a mountaineer, as the majority of his expeditions took place in the lowlands and deserts of Asia. He was first and foremost a public geographer. Second, he did not contribute to mountain science as a particular genre of scholarly investigation. Research on scientific mountaineering in the 19th century has focused on the establishment of laboratories in elevated environments or on how mountain science cleared the way to new understandings of human physiology.50 Sven Hedin neither established laboratories nor concerned himself with scholarly study of the bodily effects of high altitude. Third, previous studies have described in depth how the mountains challenged and obstructed the use of instruments, inscriptions, and bodies in knowledge production.51 Although Hedin very likely experienced similar difficulties, such issues are not present in the ways Southern Tibet and Trans-Himalaya conveyed elevated views to readers. Why then relate Hedin's travel to the history of mountaineering and mountain science? The main reason is that his narrative repeated descriptions of seeing from high altitude which were published in the early 19th century. First and foremost, Hedin echoed the idea that mountains offered an overview that gave a privileged perspective. Mountaineering was considered a productive way to explore nature, and observations from mountaintops could form the basis of a coherent understanding of landscapes. The idea was put forth by several naturalists who took an interest in mountains. The professor of natural history Horace Bénédict de Saussure, in his Voyages dans les Alps, argued that from high places, the mountain-climber could make acute observations of general natural patterns. When elevated, the eyes of the naturalist could summon and view "a multitude of objects." The professor, naturalist and poet Albrecht von Haller also spoke of how the gaze from mountaintops revealed "the theatre of the world." From the summit of mountains, the explorer could see the proportions and structures of nature "in a single view."52 The most influential proponent of this idea was Alexander von Humboldt. The German polymath was interested in the world as an integrated whole, moved by internal forces. He argued that nature should be understood as connected in an indissoluble chain. Moreover, he claimed that summits and high sierras offered opportunities to obtain a general picture of nature. While standing on a peak, the eye of the geographer could embrace many objects at once.53 The potential of mountains to offer a clear vision has been described as a general trope of 19th-century geographical discourse.54 Mountaintops were assumed to present opportunities to develop "global views of heavens and earth."55 Second, in his writings, Hedin repeated an established narrative connected to mountaineering that highlighted how elevation in the mountains created awe, vertigo, and a sense of the sublimity of nature. The men who started to explore mountains at the turn of the 19th century cultivated "an experiment in sensation—in the sublime." Moreover, they contemplated the disorientation that emanated from the vertiginous character of the peaks and passes they sought out in the Alps.56 Turn-of-the-19th-century naturalists—of whom Humboldt is a prominent example—pointed out that "to view all of creation" induced vertigo. The sublimity of nature made the observer breathless.57 Drawing on the work of philosophers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, Humboldt preached a way of exploration in which the observer could both see in overview and experience nature as beautiful and sublime.58 Much has been written about Humboldt's influence on different fields of natural science.59 Here, I merely wish to indicate that his approach combined observation of the structure and "physiognomy" of the landscape, in its larger, and even global, character, with poetic and aesthetic description.60 The Humboldtian description of rational overview and experiences of the sublime was cultivated throughout the 19th century by explorers in Asia, such as the German brothers Hermann, Adolph, and Robert Schlagintweit.61 Hedin carefully studied the work of the Germans, and just like the Schlagintweit brothers he depended upon British support for his trip. They shared an interest in the orography of Asia, and in particular in the relationship between the Himalayan and Karakorum mountains.62 Moreover, the Germans and the Swede each collected massive amounts of data in order to display the characteristics of an entire region and portray the sublimity of the landscape.63 As I shall indicate below, sentiments of awe, vertigo, and the sublime were key components in the emotional economy of elevation that Hedin described. Indeed, the presentation of the landscape in both rational and emotional ways reverberated in Southern Tibet, and even more so in Trans-Himalaya. 5 THE UNOBSTRUCTED OVERVIEW From mountains of staggering heights—sometimes equaling an "Eiffel Tower on the summit of Mont Blanc"—Sven Hedin produced word-paintings that brought forth the experience o