This thesis is about the role of local knowledge and indigenous agency in histories of nineteenth-century exploration. Focusing especially on the archival collections of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), it examines four case studies in order to consider the nature and significance of European dependence on local inhabitants during exploratory expeditions. Following traces of non-European intermediaries who contributed to the 'work' of exploration, but seldom received any recognition, the thesis also engages with the methodological challenge of reading metropolitan scholarly collections 'against the grain' in the hope of retrieving marginalised voices or experiences. The theme of archival visibility is thus as important as that of erasure. The first case study reconsiders of one of the most celebrated examples of nonEuropean participation, i.e. the pandits of the Survey of India. Focusing especially on published accounts, it questions the concept of a 'heroic indigene'. The second case study develops the idea of archival visibility with a discussion of Thomas Baines' oil paintings and sketches from the North Australian Expedition of 1855- 57. Considering the functions of expeditionary picture making, it highlights the diverse relationships that brought explorers together with indigenous and local inhabitants. The third case study attends to the role of local informants through a discussion of the Nile controversy, 1850s-70s. Examining a set of sketch maps, this chapter highlights the significance of trust and testimony within the production of knowledge. Finally, the fourth case study considers a collection of photographs of British Guiana, which were donated by Everard im Thurn in 1892. Together these case studies reveal something of the negotiated and sometimes collaborative aspects of scientific exploration and travel in the context of colonial encounters. Concurrently, it suggests routes through such collections of published, manuscript, picture, map and object collections as housed at the RGS-IBG.

This thesis proposes that the Caribs of St. Vincent, who form a small minority in the island, have been the subject of a European discourse of alterity from the fifteenth century onwards. It further argues that the key tropes employed by this discourse were primarily reflexive and focused on emerging concepts of self and property. It is argued that, as a consequence of the hegemonic position that British culture attained in St. Vincent, the Vincentian population, both Carib and non-Carib alike, internalized these tropes. This has led most modern studies of the Caribs to present them as a marginalized population on the verge of extinction. This thesis argues that contrary7 to this misconception, the position of the Caribs has fundamentally altered in the period since independence and now features at the core of an essentialist discourse of national identity. Following a general introduction, the second chapter deals primarily with the construction of the traditional tropes associated with Caribness. In the third chapter the relationship of the Caribs to a developing European anthropology is examined with reference to concepts of natural law. This is followed by an analysis of the insertion of the island of St. Vincent into the mercantilist world system. In chapter four the historiography of the Caribs is considered in terms of the influence of British texts, and alternative sources of information, primarily French and Dutch, are considered in terms of the development of an historical hegemony on the island Chapter five discusses the events in the latter half of the twentieth century which served to reinforce the stereotypes of the preceeding centuries and yet which, it is argued, brought about the possibility of new forms of self-identification. The following chapter deals with the role of land ownership as a catalyst for Carib self-consciousness. The antepenultimate chapter deals with modern historiography and the influences of supra-national discourses in the Caribbean, whilst the penultimate considers the role of the Caribs in modern party politics in St. Vincent. The thesis concludes with a summary of the theoretical implications of this study.

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The sixteenth-century Acts and Monuments by John Foxe was more than a martyrology, which memorialised the persecutions of Mary I's reign. It was also an ecclesiastical history which saw the Christian past as a battle between the church of Christ and the church of Antichrist. This thesis identifies the sources that Foxe and his collaborators used to compile the pre-reformation account in the first two editions of the Acts and Monuments (1563 and 1570 respectively). Foxe was producing a revisionist history that saw the past as revelation of prophecy and Scripture. So many of his sources - chronicles and annals written by monks and clergy - were suspected witnesses, no longer considered truthful or accurate. Foxe needed to sift through these texts to find `God's truth' as he understood it, and to rehabilitate certain authorities over others. Central to this thesis is the contention that Foxe did not do this alone. He worked as part of an extended network of scholars, printers, and reformers. His predecessor and mentor, John Bale was a vital foundation for his research; the German ecclesiastical history usually entitled the Magdeburg Centuries was an enormous influence; and the `circle' of scholars focused around Archbishop Matthew Parker, proved to be an invaluable source for rare or hard to find chronicles and annals. This study of Foxe's pre-reformation sources helps us to understand this collaborative context and to explore how he came to conceptualise the past and to redefine the interpretation of events and historical characters. It will, in particular, focus upon the significance of Foxe's pioneering role in the survival and transmission of manuscript materials relating especially to the English medieval and Anglo-Saxon past.

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