Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 24 i BBC World Histories Magazine

Welcome to this special issue of BBC World Histories magazine, following in the footsteps of some of history’s greatest pioneers. Combining features originally published between 2016 and 2019 with new pieces, the articles collected here offer the chance to vicariously experience the sights and sounds, hopes and disappointments of centuries of epic expeditions. "These travels, arranged chronologically and spanning a vast expanse of time and space, include an ancient Greek mission to the Arctic, a 15th-century grand tour of Spain and Portugal, and a daring Victorian bid to discover the source of the Nile. Of course, it’s not only the journeys themselves that are interesting, but also the motivations that fuelled them: from conquest to scientific discovery, each has something to say about the period in which it was undertaken.…

We know almost no hard facts about Pytheas (c350–c285 BC). He is believed to have been born in the early to mid-fourth century BC in Massalia (now Marseille), on the Mediterranean coast of France, which at the time was a Greek colony. The Greek historian Strabo, writing some three centuries later, described Pytheas as a poor man, though that might simply mean that he was not an aristocrat. In any case, Pytheas’s skill and ability as a seafarer must have been impressive. How else could he have survived a journey such as he is reported to have made around Britain, and recorded it, obviously in great detail, in later writings? We must imagine a man accustomed to life on the ocean, coming as he did from a colony with seafaring…

In AD 368, the Roman emperor Valentinian I marched east from Augusta Treverorum (now Trier, in western Germany), the imperial capital of Roman Gaul, to campaign beyond the Rhine. Later that year he won a hard-fought victory against the Alamanni at the battle of Solicinium, perhaps near modern-day Hechingen in south-west Germany. Valentinian’s display of Roman might deep in enemy territory was a notable sign of the power that the empire still wielded even in its twilight, and was one of the last successful offensives against the Germanic tribes that were the historic enemies of Rome. Yet despite Valentinian’s victory, the expedition is remembered largely not for the martial exploits of the emperor but for a literary achievement – a work by a brilliant ex-lawyer and Latin professor from Bordeaux…

Revered today as the ‘Traveller of Islam’, Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Lawati al-Tanji ibn Battuta was born in the Moroccan port of Tangier in 1304. Of Berber stock, rather than an Arab, his was a family of Islamic legal scholars, an intellectual heritage that would underpin later stints as chief judge to foreign rulers. Few other details are known about his background, other than what featured in his memoir, and even there reliable information – such as the number of his wives and children – is scant. We know, though, that his lifetime coincided with the highpoint of splendour under the Moroccan Marinid dynasty, which ruled swathes of North Africa between 1244 and 1465, making its imperial capital in Fez. This ancient city, where Ibn Battuta dictated…

When the French navigator and geographer Samuel de Champlain first set sail for New France (the area of North America colonised by France, some of which later became part of Canada) on 15 March 1603, it was the start of a love affair with North America that would last until his death. Over the following three decades he navigated and surveyed thousands of miles of North American rivers and coasts, and founded the first enduring French colony in the New World: Québec City. Although permanent colonisation was Champlain’s goal during most of his time in the region, it was not easily achieved. Unlike many of his predecessors, Champlain didn’t underestimate the problems involved in founding a colony. He read and studied all he could about earlier European exploration and attempted…

Jeanne Baret (1740–1807) was born to poor parents in the Burgundy region of central France. In her early twenties she was engaged as housekeeper to one of the brightest young scientists in France, Philibert Commerson (or Commerçon), and became his mistress in the years after his wife died in 1762. When he was given a royal appointment as the naturalist on the first French circumnavigation expedition, leaving France in 1767, Baret disguised herself as a young man in order to work as Commerson’s assistant on the voyage – women were not allowed on board French naval vessels at that time. Baret, literate despite her poor family background, assisted Commerson in his scientific duties on the expedition. Between them, they collected more than 6000 plant, animal and mineral specimens, all of…

In 1826 a ragtag party of eight men, injured and starving, stumbled into the lofty Hindu Kush north-east of Kabul. They had no map, no compass, no money, not even provisions. In fact, they had no clear destination: unlike most explorers, who aim to find a hidden peak or river source, the leader of this sorry band, Alexander Haughton Campbell Gardner, was not searching for glory but fleeing death. Yet despite this unpromising start, over the next three years Gardner completed a dangerous first: a circuit through the high mountains of central Asia, traversing lands and meeting peoples never before encountered by outsiders. Gardner had begun his central Asian wanderings in 1819. He was on the run when he rode into Afghanistan in 1824, and – having thrown in his…

When Pliny the Younger set out from Rome to what’s now Turkey in the baking-hot summer of AD 111, he must have experienced at least a hint of trepidation. One trait rarely attributed to this Roman author is bravery. Today, he is best known for what he saw rather than what he did. In AD 79, while he was still a teenager, he was staying with his uncle, writer Pliny the Elder, when they noticed a strange cloud in the sky above Pompeii. It was tall, branching – and puzzling. What was it? We know now, of course, that it was Vesuvius clearing its mighty throat. At the time, though, there was no ‘of course’ about it. Pliny’s uncle, brave and insatiably curious, decided to board a ship to take…

Ausonius (c310–c394) was born in Burdigala (Bordeaux), an important port in the Roman province of Aquitaine Gaul. He had a good education, studying Greek and Latin in Bordeaux and Toulouse. In 334, Ausonius became a teacher in Bordeaux. He wrote poetry – a normal activity for someone with his education – and married a noble woman, Attusia. Though it was an advantageous marriage for him, it was also a love match: Ausonius wrote impassioned love poetry for Attusia, and recorded his devastation when she died after nine years of marriage, leaving him a widower with three children. He never remarried. Ausonius spent some time working as a lawyer, but around 345 he became professor of rhetoric at Bordeaux. In 364 he was summoned to tutor Gratian, son of the Roman…

More than a century after the Black Death devastated Europe, the danger from plague had receded but was certainly not eradicated. Periodic disease outbreaks prompted many to flee their homes. So it was in the early 1480s that a Nuremberg-based doctor, Hieronymus Münzer, travelled to Italy to evade the plague that was then afflicting Germany. In 1494, the plague flared up once more – and in autumn Münzer again set out from Nuremberg with three companions on what would become a remarkable 7,000-mile horseback odyssey. The quartet traversed Germany, Switzerland and France before looping through Spain and Portugal. Münzer’s diary provides a unique insight into life in the Iberian peninsula soon after the fall of Muslim Granada to the Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. His sparse, scientific style…

Samuel de Champlain (c1574–1635) was born in Brouage, a small port on the west coast of France; little is known of his childhood. He learned navigation from his father and his aunt’s husband (both mariners), and from around 1595 served with the army of King Henry IV in Brittany. In 1598 he joined a voyage to the West Indies and Mexico, and from 1601 to 1603 served as geographer to Henry IV, gleaning information about North America from French fishermen who trawled the north-west Atlantic. In 1603 Champlain joined an expedition to the ‘Great River of Canada’, now called the St Lawrence river, in what was then known as New France. From the seasonal fur-trading base of Tadoussac, he explored the St Lawrence and Saguenay rivers. The following year Champlain…

In January 1817, a band of soldiers particularly ill-suited to the cold, breathless conditions of the high Andes tramped over lofty passes from western Argentina into Chile. Not only had they little or no experience of the effects of altitude, around half were not of South American or even Spanish descent, but African. Yet these men, fighting under an ageing general with an audacious plan, achieved victories that swung the balance in favour of independence for Chile and Peru. In the mid-1810s, the future of an independent Latin America was poised on a knife-edge. Spanish royalists had quashed patriot risings across the region. The fractious, penniless United Provinces of the Río de la Plata – roughly speaking, covering what’s now Argentina and Uruguay plus parts of southern Bolivia and Brazil…

It was a hot day in September 1854 when John Hanning Speke, a tall, fair-haired young former officer in the East India Company army, stepped ashore from a P&O steamship at Aden. He intended to cross from this British-held port on the southern coast of what’s now Yemen to Somaliland in order to hunt wild game. The colonial governor refused to grant him permission for such a dangerous excursion; however, he was willing to allow Speke to join the expedition being launched by another, older former East India Company army officer: Richard F Burton. That foray into Somaliland ended prematurely when the men were ambushed and stabbed by spear-wielding Somalis. But though Speke had disliked Burton’s arrogance even before this attack (which might have been avoided), his superior’s obsession with…

Late in 1903, a handful of Nepalese yak herders strayed across the (unmarked) northern border. Unfortunately that incursion was into Tibet. They were met by a party of armed men who promptly dispersed their yaks. Not very friendly – but hardly a just precursor to what followed: the invasion of Tibet by a British force. Tibet was – and still is – a land famed for its remote location and harsh terrain. Much of it occupies a high plateau from 3,000 to 5,000 metres above sea level; travellers arriving across the high passes of the Himalaya are liable to suffer altitude sickness, and for centuries could expect a welcome as chilly as the climate. At the start of the 20th century Tibet was a theocratic state ruled by lamas (highly…

On the outer facade of the Palais de la Bourse in Marseille, France, a statue of a man stands high on a plinth. Flanked by columns and protected by a pedimental roof, his body is wrapped in layers of clothing as if to ward off the chill. His face is framed by neat hair and a trim beard. But it is his eyes that capture the attention: they stare out unflinchingly from the stone above a strong projecting nose, their intensity emphasised by furrowed eyebrows. Coupled with his set, pursed lips, the overall sense is of steely determination, unfaltering in the face of any adversity. This man is Pytheas, one of Marseille’s ancient heroes. He lived in the fourth and early third century BC, around the same time as Alexander…

Born in lakeside Como in northern Italy, Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 61 or 62 – c113) was probably tutored at home before being taken under the wing of his uncle, Pliny the Elder. This would be the defining relationship of the younger man’s life. The elder Pliny instilled in him a deep respect for hard work and intellectual endeavour. A commander in the army and the navy, Pliny the Elder also found time to write numerous books on natural history. He was relentlessly active. “The only time he took from his work was for his bath,” wrote Pliny the Younger later, “and by bath I mean actual immersion, for while he was being rubbed down and dried he had a book read to him or dictated notes”. Pliny the Elder…

On a piercingly clear day in June 1325, a 21-year-old Moroccan from Tangier fastened his sandals, checked he had everything he needed, and said his goodbyes to family and friends. He was setting out on Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – a long and arduous journey from the northwest tip of Africa, but one that usually took months or a few years, not decades. He departed alone, “having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me, and a desire long cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries… I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones… and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. My parents being yet in…

Born in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg (now in Austria), Hieronymus Münzer (1437 or 1447–1508) studied at the University of Leipzig, where he became a lecturer. He then learned medicine in Pavia, south of Milan, where he qualified as a physician in 1477 or 1478. He then started work as a doctor in Nuremberg, where he became a leading figure in the city’s Humanist circle. Münzer was a real Renaissance man, an expert geographer who also worked extensively in the fields of cosmography and astronomy. He contributed geographical sections – including the first printed map of Germany – to the famous illustrated biblical and world history known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, first printed in 1493, and wrote a booklet on the nature of wine as well as several medical reports. Münzer was…

In April 1768, two French ships, the Boudeuse and the Étoile, rode at anchor off the coast of Tahiti. Until that time, France had been unaware of the existence of the volcanic Polynesian island that later gained a reputation as an earthly paradise, but the 330 officers and men taking their first shore leave in nearly a year would have appreciated its natural – and human – beauty. The two ships constituted an expedition, under the command of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, to make the first French circumnavigation of the globe and to find natural resources of use to an imperial power. Bougainville’s published account of the voyage is careful to emphasise French shyness in the face of Tahitian sexual freedom – looking with desire rather than acting upon it. Yet…

On 10 June 1834, HMS Beagle emerged from the Strait of Magellan into the open Pacific Ocean. It was a moment of huge relief in particular for one long-suffering voyager, after facing dangers “enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril, and shipwreck” – the expedition’s 25-year-old year-old naturalist, Charles Darwin. And it was also the start of a leg of the groundbreaking expedition that would prove pivotal in the evolution of his ideas on natural selection. At this stage, Darwin was more geologist than naturalist and, though his notes on the species of the Galápagos Islands are often cited as the crucial evidence, his observations on Chile’s geology also helped lay the foundations of his revolutionary theories. Two weeks after rounding the tip of South…

Francis Younghusband (1863–1942) was born in Murree, British India, son of a general in the Indian army. Taken to England at a very young age, he was schooled at Clifton College, Bristol. By nature inclined towards cavalry patrol work – ahead of the main force, on reconnaissance – in 1882 he joined the King’s Dragoon Guards in Meerut. In 1886 he received six months’ leave to travel to Manchuria, making his remarkable return journey alone through Inner Mongolia and Sinkiang (now Xinjiang) in western China, crossing the Mustagh Pass to reach Kashmir. After news of his journey spread, he became famous, aged just 25. In the 1890s Younghusband travelled widely in Chinese Turkestan, pursuing the ‘Great Game’ – spying on Russia to thwart its ambitions of securing a warm-water port…