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Victoria and Albert Museum), the India Offi ce Library
and Records (acquired by the British Library), and the
Royal Geographical Society (acquired by Cambridge
University), testify to the robust application of the me-
dium to the knowledge base of empire.
Having already achieved recognition for his ex-
plorations in charting the little known recesses of
Africa, David Livingstone’s Zambezi Expedition of
1858–64 sought to incorporate photography into the
quest for knowledge of the principal features and
natural resources of the eastern and central regions
of the continent. The expedition was launched by Sir
Roderick Murchison, geologist and President of the
Royal Geographical Society, who aside from scientifi c
interests also aimed to encourage agriculture and com-
mercial activity among the inhabitants, thus remaining
true to the colonialist project. The navigation of the
Zambezi River was essential to the enterprise, and was
consequently photographed in an effort to record the
terrain along the water body. The expedition’s botanist
Dr John Kirk realized some success with the camera;
his work provided images of the land that were useful
in the study of disease and plant life. Such wilderness
views could seem neutral enough on the surface as
empirical data for scientifi c argument, yet they also
literally and symbolically enacted a form of dominance
over the native environment (consider the naming of
indigenous places after British explorers or individuals
of political distinction). Close ties existed between the
British War Department’s Topographical Department
and the Royal Geographical Society, whose maps were
employed for gathering information about foreign
regions, including Africa. In 1867 Sir Robert Napier
led a political rescue operation into Ethiopia, gener-
ally known as the Abyssinian Campaign of 1867–68,
which is purported to have yielded 1500 photographs
taken by a corps of Royal Engineers. The fact-fi nding,
scientifi c contingent of the expedition was directed by
Murchison once again, thus bearing further witness to
the importance of the medium with regard to the survey
in the double sense of the term: a coordinated effort to
articulate of boundaries and landmarks and to ascertain
features of scientifi c and political signifi cance in the
overall geophysical and ethnological comprehension
of an environment.
The Abyssinian expedition was one of several geo-
graphical campaigns in which the Royal Engineers
participated and included the camera as a survey
instrument. Already in 1857, they had begun to work
with photographs to assist in North American Bound-
ary Survey. This was a joint enterprise between the
United States and Canada to mark the boundary along
the forty-ninth parallel to avoid possible contention
over gold. Though the Americans had tried their hand
at the medium, only the British engineers trained in
photography seemed to have success. Their work,
mostly produced in the Pacifi c northwest, comprised
an offi cial photographic record that made its way to
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1863. A
corps of Royal Engineers was also hired to undertake
extensive mapping and documentation of the Holy
Land—Jerusalem, Palestine, and the Sinai Peninsula.
Ordnance Surveys were conducted of Jerusalem in
1864, and of the Peninsula in 1868. These were chiefl y
geographical and scientifi c in nature, in part privately
funded, and especially signifi cant for strengthening the
religious ties of Britain with the Judaic and Christian
past of the region through the pictorial and cartographic
identifi cation of biblical sites. Thus, in the linking of
picture with site, and the coordination of pictures with
the procedures and symbolic meanings of mapmaking
and the topographical survey, the survey became a
process that was clearly more than a mere exercise in
measurement and pictorial documentation.
While one could cite further cases related to expedi-
tionary enterprise and ideology beyond the few examples
discussed thus far, the survey as a projection of a larger
vision of expansion is especially well evinced by the grand
surveys of the American west between 1867 and 1879.
These were geologist Clarence King’s US Geological
Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, launched under the
auspices of the US Geological Survey; Lieutenant George
Montague Wheeler’s US Geographic Surveys West of the
One Hundredth Meridian; the US Geological and Geo-
graphical Survey of the Territories, led by the geologist
Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden; and John Wesley Powell’s
US Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky
Mountain Region. The civilian and military men who were
the leaders of the surveys recruited photographers to aug-
ment the communication of their fi ndings to the scientifi c
community, and to persuade government that additional ex-
penditures for further campaigns were worthwhile. Among
the best known of the operators were William Henry
Jackson (with the Hayden survey), Timothy H. O’Sullivan
(King and Wheeler), Carleton Watkins (King), E.O. Bea-
man (Powell), and John K. Hillers (Powell). Their works
were distributed in stereographic form, single prints, and
albums, and reproduced in print media both in the reports
of the expeditions and in popular illustrated journals.
Survey activity during the nineteenth century was
aligned with the growth and spread of modern institu-
tions. In this period of positivist reliance on observable
phenomena for knowledge of the world, photographic
images were increasingly accepted as visual evidence
of domestic and foreign places and public works im-
portant to cultural legacy and national determination.
Photographs also began to meet the requirements for
pictorial accompaniment in geophysical and anthropo-