ABSTRACT
There is a vast gulf between the effects of expeditions on global history and what people know about them as micro-political entities. The animus can be recognized as part of the internal political friction endemic to the political organization of an expedition. For all New South Welshmen, generous and otherwise, who took interest in the first Leichhardt expedition, the ultimate reward was the return of the heroes. Leichhardts display of entrepreneurialism, which involved rallying financial and in-kind donations from settlers, is significant for what it reveals about the economic properties of expeditions. Like most cultural objects, expeditions are ciphers. The subsumption of the many to the one is a key element of how expeditions function in the cultural economy. The funding of exploration reveals how socioeconomic practices, most familiar for their purely commercial applications, could be readily applied to the more extreme form of speculation required for the floating of an exploratory expedition.
