New Book – The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions

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Adrian Howkins and Peder Roberts, eds. The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Cover of the Cambridge History of the Polar Regions edited by Adrian Howkins and Peder Roberts

Historical fields are not self-evident categories. This extends even to divisions based on cartographic lines: continents, nation-states, and regions are demarcated if not completely arbitrarily, then certainly with the aid of human choices. Journals, professional associations, or mailing lists can all be markers of a field’s existence. So too can a Cambridge History. Consequently, when the idea of the first ever Cambridge History of the Polar Regions was floated to us back in 2016, we were intrigued and excited. Seven years on we are proud of the volume that resulted—but feel that the existence of the “polar regions” as a historical field is unsettled, rather than validated.

There are several reasons for this. The first, and most obvious, is that the earth’s northern and southern extremes have vastly different political and cultural geographies, as well as physical geographies. The Arctic as an ocean surrounded by the homelands of Indigenous peoples and filled with communities that economically and militarily stamp the lands with their political imprints. The Antarctic is a continent surrounded by high seas populated by a rotating cast of technicians, support staff, and scientists and governed by a unique international agreement that suspends (but does not abolish) sovereignty claims and privileges science over other forms of human activity. Differing physical geographies have informed differing histories, but always in conjunction with politics and culture.

Cold climates and the presence of certain marine animals makes both polar regions logically paired objects of study for many scientists including glaciologists and zoologists.

To be sure, there are some commonalities. Cold climates and the presence of certain marine animals makes both polar regions logically paired objects of study for many scientists including glaciologists and zoologists. And many explorers—Roald Amundsen and Richard Byrd being perhaps the most famous examples—shaped identities as polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic explorers. If the polar regions have functioned as a useful category for a particular actor or set of actors, then we see value in following it. The history of an institution such as Britain’s Scott Polar Research Institute, for example, only makes sense in relation to both the Arctic and Antarctica—and arguably also to Britain’s history as a maritime power with global imperial ambitions. The knowledge it has produced reflects this “polar” focus.  In such cases, following the history makes sense, even if elements of the history are problematic. 

Three Inuk skin a polar bear on a shoreline. Water and a canoe are in the background.
Three Inuit [Letuk (left), Isa (right), and Sarpinak (middle)] skinning a polar bear, Leach Bay, Nunavut, 1960. Credit: Rosemary Gilliat Eaton / Rosemary Gilliat Eaton fonds / Library and Archives Canada / e010868768.

More broadly the Cambridge History of the Polar Regions takes a both/and approach to what we label the “problems of polar history.” Political entities such as Canada can be acknowledged as arbitrary creations and at the same time recognized as meaningful frames for historical analysis. But doing so opens the question of power relations. Who created Canada—and the Canadian Arctic? And if we place it into a common category with the Antarctic, are we not privileging the perspective of those who picked out common phenomena as most relevant, at the expense of those for whom the particularity of local lifeways defined their connections to place? This is particularly important for Indigenous peoples. Placing Inuit, Sami, or Nenets histories in a box with Antarctica strikes us as potentially deeply problematic precisely because it replicates the privileging of the explorer over the seasonal traveler across homelands, and the industrial whaler over the reindeer herder. It also privileges the science associated with the expansion of European empires over local knowledge-making systems.

Placing Inuit, Sami, or Nenets histories in a box with Antarctica strikes us as potentially deeply problematic precisely because it replicates the privileging of the explorer over the seasonal traveler across homelands, and the industrial whaler over the reindeer herder.

Consequently, we strove in the book to represent a wide range of different perspectives—but it could have of course been wider. It looks very different from what such a volume might have looked like a generation ago. The volume includes authors from around the world, from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and career stages, and with quite different approaches to conveying their argument. This is in our eyes a great strength. Readers will find fresh perspectives on well-trodden topics from the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration to the riddle of the Norse settlement in Greenland, from the history of mining in the Arctic to the history of literary representations of Antarctica, and from the question of who first sighted Antarctica to the history of Russia’s colonization of Siberia. Nevertheless, in the time between commissioning the chapters and seeing the book reach the shelf we began to feel the lack of certain perspectives rather keenly. Top of this list is the history of education and, in particular, the experience of young Indigenous students at residential schools, which is hinted at in the first chapter, but not subsequently interrogated in the detail it deserves.

At one point it occurred to us that the idea of a Cambridge History of the Tropical Regions would be ridiculed, invoking as it does images of pith-helmeted colonialists for whom huge, diverse swathes of the planet could be collapsed into a distinction that made sense from a more temperate perspective. Why should the polar regions be different? To be honest, we aren’t fully convinced that they should be. At the same time, the sheer number of individuals, organizations, cultural tropes, and scientific structures that link the Arctic and Antarctic makes us hesitant to abandon it completely. We don’t know if there will be another Cambridge History of the Polar Regions, though if there isn’t, we sincerely hope there is a Cambridge History of the Antarctic and a Cambridge History of the Arctic. But if and when these volumes emerge, we are quite certain that they will not be edited by two middle-aged white men with permanent jobs in Britain and Norway respectively.

We hope that the volume does something to contribute to the rapidly developing scholarship, and we look forward to participating in the debates it generates.

We are proud of the volume that resulted. Our hope is that it will stimulate, inform, and perhaps provoke. But we are aware also that it is an artefact of its time—a time in which both scholarly and political trends are moving quickly, against the inescapable background of the climate crisis and calls for greater Indigenous sovereignty. We hope that the volume does something to contribute to the rapidly developing scholarship, and we look forward to participating in the debates it generates.

Feature Image: Walter Livingstone-Learmonth and dead polar bear aboard S.S. MAUD. 31 July 1889. North West Territories. Credit: Walter Livingstone-Learmonth / Library and Archives Canada / C-088328.
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Peder Roberts and Adrian Howkins

Peder Roberts is Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Stavanger, Norway. He holds a PhD in history from Stanford University and has previously worked at universities in Australia, France, and Sweden. Peder is interested in the intersections between science, politics, and ideas about polar and ocean environments during the twentieth century. │ Adrian Howkins is Reader in Environmental History at the University of Bristol. His work focuses on the history of the polar regions and parks and protected areas. He is currently completing a book on the history of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.

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