ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of natural history and the sciences in travel and exploration in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on gender, amateurism and transnational networks. Global knowledge networks emerged from the intersections of exploration and empire, and natural history and travel narratives became entwined in a systemising vision of nature. This chapter emphasises scientific travel as a form of scientific discourse in its own right, and one that presents significant opportunities for deepening understanding of the ways in which women and ‘amateur’ observers participated in the sciences, rehabilitating their agency in scientific travel and writing.
