Travel

From a Western perspective, travel begins with Europe's fascination with the “Other.” Examples of this include religious pilgrimages and the Renaissance expeditions of trade and exploration. Undoubtedly, travel is also tied to colonization by European forces, beginning with the travels of the Portuguese to Africa in 1455 to obtain slave labor when Pope Nicolas V granted the Portuguese the right to do so; followed by the voyages of the Portuguese navigator Bartholomew Dias in 1488 around the Cape of Good Hope; Christopher Columbus's voyages to the Americas from 1492 to 1502; and culminating with the numerous voyages of exploration of the Pacific by Spanish, French, Dutch and English navigators, mainly in the 16th and17th centuries. Religious missionaries also contributed to the waves of travelers around the world, oftentimes writing long and detailed accounts of their experiences. Many of these accounts, if read with a critical eye, provide valuable insights into the lifeways of indigenous peoples before the massive changes wrought by centuries of contact. Scholars have found a series of parallels between the accounts written by missionaries during their religious expeditions and 19th-century travel writing.

Travel expeditions were of particular significance to European naturalists in the 18th (such as Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) who worked in Jamaica, and Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) who worked in Suriname) and 19th centuries, particularly Charles Lyell (1797–1875), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), and especially Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882). These travels made naturalists aware of the presence and relevance of the fossil record, the distribution of plants and animals, and the presence of societies with different cultures, languages, beliefs, rituals, and customs. Many of these findings contributed to the emergence of anthropology as a discipline. For instance, Sir Charles Lyell, close friend of Darwin and supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, traveled around the world observing geological phenomena. From findings during these travels emerged the concept of uniformitarianism to explain geological changes throughout history. Thomas Huxley, a self-educated intellectual and author of Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), traveled aboard HMS Rattlesnake to Australia as an assistant surgeon from 1847 to 1851. His findings in natural history (particularly zoology) resulting from this trip were published in a work entitled Oceanic Hydrozoa.Ernst Haeckel, whose “law of recapitulation” was unfortunately appropriated by the Nazi party to justify nationalism and racism, traveled to the Mediterranean to conduct research on invertebrate groups.

Charles Darwin traveled for five years (1831–1835) as a naturalist aboard HMS Beagle on a British science expedition around the world. One of Darwin's best-known stops during this voyage was the Galapagos Islands, which Darwin conceived as “a group of satellites attached to America,” with organisms that were physically comparable, organically dissimilar, yet at [Page 2222]the same time closely related to each other. He also traveled to other parts of South America and the world, collecting specimens of plants and animals for further study. This voyage was instrumental in Darwin's development of his famous concepts of co-adaptation and modification of organic beings, and more importantly, his theory of organic evolution by natural selection. This theory holds that variation within species occurs randomly, and that the survival or extinction of organisms is determined by each organism's ability to adapt to its environment. Darwin published these theories in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859.

Source: © iStockphoto/Christoph Ermel.

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