Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction: The Problems of Polar History
- 2 ‘I Watch to See How the Land Is Changing’: An Inuit Perspective on Changing Environments and Cultural Resilience in the Western Canadian Arctic
- 3 Evolution of the Antarctic Continent and Its Ice Sheet
- 4 The Initial Peopling of the Circumpolar North
- 5 Archaeology, Politics, and Sámi Heritage
- 6 The Norse Settlement of Greenland
- 7 Russia, the First Arctic Empire, 1000–1917
- 8 The Discovery of Antarctica from Ptolemy to Shackleton
- 9 Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage in Myth and Memory
- 10 The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present
- 11 Representing the Polar Regions through Historical Fiction
- 12 Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Knowledge-Making
- 13 Britain’s Polar Empire, 1769–1982
- 14 Canada and the High Arctic Islands, 1880–1950
- 15 The Genesis of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, 1871–1920
- 16 Industrial Whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic
- 17 A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)
- 18 Mining and Colonialism in the Circumpolar North
- 19 Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991
- 20 Greenland: From Colony to Self-government, 1721–2021
- 21 Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions
- 22 The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty System
- 23 The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
- 24 Petroleum Development and the State in Arctic North America, 1919–1977
- 25 The Rise of Circumpolar Political Movements
- 26 The History of Polar Environmental Governance
- 27 The Antarctic Extension of Latin America
- 28 Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century
- 29 Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
- 30 Re-storying from Within: Renewing Relationships Beyond the Shadows of Polar History
- 31 Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
- Index
- References
31 - Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2023
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction: The Problems of Polar History
- 2 ‘I Watch to See How the Land Is Changing’: An Inuit Perspective on Changing Environments and Cultural Resilience in the Western Canadian Arctic
- 3 Evolution of the Antarctic Continent and Its Ice Sheet
- 4 The Initial Peopling of the Circumpolar North
- 5 Archaeology, Politics, and Sámi Heritage
- 6 The Norse Settlement of Greenland
- 7 Russia, the First Arctic Empire, 1000–1917
- 8 The Discovery of Antarctica from Ptolemy to Shackleton
- 9 Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage in Myth and Memory
- 10 The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present
- 11 Representing the Polar Regions through Historical Fiction
- 12 Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Knowledge-Making
- 13 Britain’s Polar Empire, 1769–1982
- 14 Canada and the High Arctic Islands, 1880–1950
- 15 The Genesis of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, 1871–1920
- 16 Industrial Whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic
- 17 A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)
- 18 Mining and Colonialism in the Circumpolar North
- 19 Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991
- 20 Greenland: From Colony to Self-government, 1721–2021
- 21 Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions
- 22 The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty System
- 23 The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
- 24 Petroleum Development and the State in Arctic North America, 1919–1977
- 25 The Rise of Circumpolar Political Movements
- 26 The History of Polar Environmental Governance
- 27 The Antarctic Extension of Latin America
- 28 Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century
- 29 Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
- 30 Re-storying from Within: Renewing Relationships Beyond the Shadows of Polar History
- 31 Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
- Index
- References
Summary
Polar history can be seen through four different temporal lenses. There is Deep Time with its geological timescales against which to interpret and understand change. There is the ‘golden age’ of polar history, approximately 1800 to 1930, which orients the significance of the poles through the perspective of colonial exploration. There is the Anthropocene, our post-Holocene human-dominated epoch, which scholars have dated (not without controversy) to the 1950s and after. The Anthropocene is part of the geological timescale, but in the polar regions it corresponds to a temporality traditionally rooted in geopolitics: the Cold War era of militarization and intensified scientific interest in the polar regions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions , pp. 770 - 788Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
Andrews, Thomas D., MacKay, Glen, and Andrew, Leon, Hunters of the Alpine Ice: The NWT Ice Patch Study (Yellowknife: Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, 2009).Google Scholar
Berger, Thomas R., Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1977).Google Scholar
Binnema, Ted, Enlightened Zeal: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Scientific Networks, 1670–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bocking, Stephen, “Toxic Surprises: Contaminants and Knowledge in the Northern Environment”, in Bocking, Stephen and Martin, Brad, eds., Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2017), pp. 421–464.Google Scholar
Bockstoce, John R., Whales, Ice, and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986).Google Scholar
CBC News, “Quebec Couple Fleeing COVID-19 ‘Endangered’ Yukon First Nation, Chief Says”, CBC News (30 March 2020), www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/quebec-couple-old-crow-yukon-covid-19-1.5514429.Google Scholar
Craciun, Adriana, “Franklin’s Sobering True Legacy”, The Ottawa Citizen (10 September 2014), https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/adriana-craciun-franklins-sobering-true-legacy.Google Scholar
Craciun, Adriana, Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Cruikshank, Julie, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Dean, Ryan, and Whitney Lackenbauer, P., “A Northern Nuclear Nightmare? Operation Morning Light and the Recovery of Cosmos 954 in the Northwest Territories, 1978”, in Colbourn, Susan and Sayle, Timothy Andrews, eds., The Nuclear North: Histories of Canada in the Atomic Age (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Dodds, Klaus, and Collis, Christy, “Post-colonial Antarctica”, in Dodds, Klaus, Hemmings, Alan, and Roberts, Peder, eds., Handbook on the Politics of Antarctica (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017), pp. 50–68, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784717681.00014.Google Scholar
Duchaussois, Pierre, Aux Glaces Polaires: Indiens et Esquimaux (Ville La Salle: Noviciat des Oblats de Marie Immaculée, 1921).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunaway, Finis, Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Dunbar, Moira, “The Effect of Sea Ice Conditions on Maritime Arctic Expeditions During the Franklin Era”, in Sutherland, Patricia D., ed., The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1985), pp. 114–121, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16pgd.13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Crystal, “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh (By Strength, We Are Still Here): Indigenous Northerners Confronting Hierarchies of Power at Day and Residential Schools in Nanhkak Thak (the Inuvik Region, Northwest Territories), 1959–1982”, PhD diss. (University of Alberta, 2019).Google Scholar
Jordan, Douglas, “The Deadliest Flu: The Complete Story of the Discovery and Reconstruction of the 1918 Pandemic Virus”, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (updated 17 December 2019), www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-1918-virus.html.Google Scholar
Kesling, Ben, and Dube, Ryan, “Covid-19 Reaches Antarctica, the Last Continent Hit by the Pandemic”, The Wall Street Journal (22 December 2020), www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-reaches-antarctica-the-last-continent-hit-by-the-pandemic-11608681353.Google Scholar
Lindsay, Debra, Science in the Subarctic: Trappers, Traders, and the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loo, Tina, Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Mancilla, Alejandra, “A Continent of and for Whiteness? ‘White’ Colonialism and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty”, Polar Record 55 (2019): 317–319, https://doi.org/10.1017/S003224741900069X.Google Scholar
Marcus, Alan R., Inuit Relocation Policies in Canada and Other Circumpolar Countries, 1925–60 (Ottawa: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1995).Google Scholar
Minardi, Di, “Antarctica Is the Last Continent Without COVID-19: Scientists Want to Keep It That Way”, National Geographic (7 August 2020), www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/antarctica-last-continent-without-coronavirus-covid-scientists-keep-that-way.Google Scholar
Mosby, Ian, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–52”, Histoire sociale/Social History 46 (2013): 145–172.Google Scholar
Parlee, Brenda L., and Caine, Ken J., eds., When the Caribou Do Not Come: Indigenous Knowledge and Adaptive Management in the Western Arctic (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Powell, Christopher, and Peristerakis, Julia, “Genocide in Canada: A Relational View”, in Woolford, Andrew, Benvenuto, Jeff, and Hinton, Alexander Laban, eds., Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), pp. 70–92.Google Scholar
Power, Ellen and Keeling, Arn, “Cleaning up Cosmos: Satellite Debris, Radioactive Risk, and the Politics of Knowledge in Operation Morning Light,” The Northern Review 48 (2018): 81–109.Google Scholar
Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, “Territorial Evolution of the Northwest Territories” (Yellowknife: Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, 2018), www.pwnhc.ca/territorial-evolution-of-the-northwest-territories/.Google Scholar
Rand, Lisa Ruth, “Falling Cosmos: Nuclear Reentry and the Environmental History of Earth Orbit”, Environmental History 24 (2019): 78–103, https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emy125.Google Scholar
Ray, Arthur J., The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sangster, Joan, The Iconic North: Cultural Constructions of Aboriginal Life in Postwar Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Shirley V., “Ingenious and Innocuous? Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty as Imperialism”, Polar Journal 1 (2011): 51–62, https://doi.org/10.1080/2154896x.2011.568787.Google Scholar
Solomon, Susan, “The Discovery of the Antarctic Ozone Hole”, Nature 575 (2019): 46–47, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02837-5.Google Scholar
Stella, Elisa, Mari, Lorenzo, Gabrieli, Jacopo, et al., “Permafrost Dynamics and the Risk of Anthrax Transmission: A Modelling Study”, Scientific Reports 10 (2020), 16460, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-72440-6.Google Scholar
Syvitski, Jaia, Waters, Colin N., Day, John, et al., “Extraordinary Human Energy Consumption and Resultant Geological Impacts Beginning Around 1950 ce Initiated the Proposed Anthropocene Epoch”, Communications Earth and Environment 1 (2020), 32, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-020-00029-y.Google Scholar
Tester, Frank James, and Kulchyski, Peter, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939–63 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern Experience (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Winnipeg: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).Google Scholar
Warde, Paul, Robin, Libby, and Sörlin, Sverker, The Environment: A History of the Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Woolford, Andrew, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015).Google Scholar