Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Views and Visions of the Tropical World
Felix Driver and Luciana Martins
Voyages
2. "On the Spot": Traveling Artists and the Iconographic Inventory of the World, 1769-1859
Claudio Greppi
3. The Stimulations of Travel: Humboldt’s Physiological Construction of the Tropics
Michael Dettelbach
4. "The Struggle for Luxuriance": William Burchell Collects Tropical Nature
Luciana Martins and Felix Driver
Mappings
5. Dominica and Tahiti: Tropical Islands Compared
Peter Hulme
6. Imagining the Tropical Colony: Henry Smeathman and the Termites of Sierra Leone
Starr Douglas and Felix Driver
7. Matthew Fontaine Maury’s "Sea of Fire": Hydrography, Biogeography, and Providence in the Tropics
D. Graham Burnett
Sites
8. Envisioning the Tropics: Joseph Hooker in India and the Himalayas, 1848-1850
David Arnold
9. Eyeing Samoa: People, Places, and Spaces in Photographs in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Leonard Bell
10. Returning Fears: Tropical Disease and the Metropolis
Rod Edmond
Afterword
11. Tropic and Tropicality
Denis Cosgrove
Notes
Select Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
"This volume explores some of the diverse ways in which constantly shifting ideas and experiences of the tropics shaped Europeans’ sense of themselves....The collection ranges very widely, both geographically and chronologically, taking the reader from the Himalayas to the Caribbean and from the eighteenth century to the twentieth."
Art: European Art
Biological Sciences: Tropical Biology and Conservation
History: British and Irish History | Discoveries and Exploration
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.