“There is Nothing in the Desert”: Empire, Environmental Perceptions, and the Allure of Emptiness in Modern Desert Exploration

Andrea Duffy, PhD

Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University

Modern imperialism was about more than just resource-richenvironments and new spaces for settlement; it also involved the investigation, acquisition, and control of desolate, forbidding places such as deserts, high mountains, oceans, polar regions, and space.  These extreme environments involved heightened threats to human visitors and created unique challenges for imperialism.  They also defied common assumptions about the drivers and objectives of imperialism.

Unlike other landscapes of exploration and empire, extreme environments were generally considered uninhabitable and lacked the appeal of resources.  Explorers branded them as useless, dangerous, and empty, even when they were not.  While most extreme environments were considered natural – and in some cases the most pristine examples of nature – imperial agents often viewed desert regions as unnatural and sought not just to contain or tame them, but to restore them to an idealized, fertile past.

This paper highlights the unique nature of desert exploration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  It affirms that imperial ventures were largely about power and the ideal of control over not just territory or people, but nature itself.

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