Travel Writing and the History of Conquest
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 02.23.04 | 9:09 PM ET
What’s the connection? Uma Dasgupta explores the issue in the Bangladesh Daily Star. “There has always been a close relationship between writing, conquest and empire building, with travel writing not only facilitating but also itself being made possible by imperial expansionism,” Dasgupta writes. “The travel narrative was one of the ways for the Empire to assess its territory, grow and gain stability. In Europe, although individual explorers and adventurers were already out there ‘discovering the world,’ the culture of travel dated back to the 18th Century, when young men from the English aristocracy were sent on their ‘Grand Tour’ as part of their education, and to emphasise upon them their great burden of colonising the world.”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
