| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire. Edited by Felix Driver and Luciana Martins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xii + 279 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. $25.00.
Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire is an excellent volume of eleven essays that makes a lasting contribution to the history and geography of the tropics. Editors Felix Driver and Luciana Martins characterize the volume as "an opportunity to reconsider (historical) approaches to the visual inventory of tropical travel and the variety of interpretative strategies it allows" (p. 8). It centers on how European and American travelers experienced tropical places in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how those tropical images were shaped by historical geographies within and beyond the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer.	1
Although at first glance the individual essays seem disjointed, the editors tie them together nicely in their introductory essay, identifying three main themes that weave coherence throughout the volume: voyages, mappings, and sites. "Voyages" centers on the role of European traveling artists and scientists in representing the tropics. Three essays succeed admirably in answering the following question: How do traveling and being in the tropics affect one's knowledge of the tropics? Claudio Greppi's "On the Spot" highlights traveling artist William Hodges, whose voyages to India influenced Alexander von Humboldt's tropical visions. Michael Dettelbach's essay "Stimulations of Travel" explores Humboldt's discourse on the tropics that entangles an Enlightenment culture of sensibility to tropical landscapes. "The Struggle for Luxuriance" by Martins and Driver focuses on naturalist William Burchell's efforts to assemble visual representations and scientific evidence of a luxuriant nature during his travels to Africa and Brazil.	. . .

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