ABSTRACT
Public and scientific interest in polar environments has never been greater. The twentieth century witnessed expanding concern for the polar regions which built on earlier limited contacts. First interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was commercial, with the entry of whaling and fishing fleets from Europe and the United States. The nineteenth century witnessed the dramatic attempts in the Canadian Arctic by Royal Navy expeditions to find the North West Passage. Similarly in the Russian Arctic hectic exploration brought increasing geographical knowledge. The pace of contacts and ‘map making’ has quickened relentlessly in the twentieth century. Public interest was ignited by the heroic exploits of Peary, Cook and Stefansson in the Arctic, and of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton in the Antarctic, together with the first whaling activities in the southern ocean in the early 1890s. Interest between the First and Second World Wars was based on questions of sovereignty over Arctic land, with the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia, in particular, wishing to stake their territorial claims. Increased whaling, and political agreement over the Antarctic continent, typified a more collaborative approach in the southern polar regions.
