To historians of nineteenth-century technology and empire, the steamship was an important 'tool of empire'. In his 2023 E. G. R. Taylor lecture, Professor Charles W. J. Withers examines river-based exploration in the first decade after the foundation in 1830 of the Royal Geographical Society and, specifically, the McGregor Laird expedition to the Niger, the Euphrates and Tigris Expedition of Rawdon Chesney and William Ainsworth, and the activities of Alexander Burnes on the Indus. Drawing upon work in the history of science and the history of the book, this illustrated lecture will consider the steamship as an instrument of exploration, the nature of expeditionary 'failure' and why, in this period, these and other rivers were so central to geographical and political concerns.
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