Kinship and Conflict: The Schlagintweit Brothers’ Explorations in the Alps, Himalaya, and Sierra Nevada

• In Event: Modern Orogenesis: Mountains and the Human Imagination

Abstract

Influenced by Alexander von Humboldt, the geographers Hermann, Robert, and the geologist Adolph Schlagintweit began their career with botanical and glaciological studies on the Alps while achieving considerable mountaineering feats. After their request to the Prussian King for a multi-year expedition to Asia was denied, the British East India Company invited the brothers in 1854 to an exploration of India, the Himalaya, and parts of Central Asia, with expenses also funded by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. This opportunity offered funding in the service of modern science but also tied their mission to competing colonialist goals. The brothers spent the following three years in India and high Asia, producing maps, descriptions of the flora and fauna, studies on geology and meteorology along with discriminating observations on local populations. After Adolph was beheaded as a presumed Chinese spy in Kashgar in 1857, Robert and Hermann continued their academic work in Germany. Robert began exploring the Western United States and published multiple works in the years following.

Oyndrila Sarkar concluded: “The fate of the Schlagintweit mission, which highlights nineteenth-century European rivalries around exploration and knowledge production, encourages us to rethink categories like ‘Western’ science and ‘colonial’ science, and to see the surveys as more than mere map-producing missions.” I am intrigued by the contradictions and complications emerging from the Schlagintweits’ expedition, which challenge one-sided British and German historiographies and provide insights into imperial sciences. As a literary scholar, I approach the contested legacy of the brothers through a close reading of the texts, sketches, photographs, and objects eventually sold to scientific institutions, collectors, and the public, shaping the European reception of the Himalayan mountains and its peoples.

Author

• Caroline Schaumann, Emory University