bird before land

We may think of empire as an unapologetic entity, too large to deny its own existence. The fact of its violence is all-encompassing. In the eyes of those who suffer from under it, the empire cannot be ignored—but there are also those who depend on its invisibility for the functioning of their world. This is a story about how the empire hides itself from itself, through the story it tells about itself.

The origins of empires fall together with the historical emergence of liberalism in the 18th century. Mehta (1999, p. 194) writes on this co-emergence:

“It is tempting to see the triumph of liberalism and the concurrent extension of the empire as either discontinuous facts that do not relate to each other or as plainly contradicting each other, and therefore casting doubt on the authenticity of the former. The thesis of discontinuity misunderstands the role of liberalism generally, and especially in this period. From its very inception in the seventeenth century, liberalism had been much more than a mere political doctrine with a local reach. By the early nineteenth century and with added vigor through the course of it, it was a robust mindset with a confidence in its global vision. This liberalism did not mysteriously get transformed into some demonic urge to rule the world the instant the British ventured beyond their shores. [...] liberalism and empire were tightly braided threads such that their separation would have resulted in the fraying of a well-woven mental and political tapestry.”

At the same time, liberalism, in its elaborations as a theory, is at odds with many aspects of empire. Liberalism, on the one hand, relies on the resources and globalisation provided through colonisation. On the other hand, the liberal tradition purports that its values—individual self-determination, basic rights, democracy, or tolerance—hold the world over. These liberal values extend rights that the empire violates and denies. This is not to say that liberalism has not also served as the argument in struggles of liberation and for rights. The language of liberalism can be used to challenge liberalism and demand inclusion, just as the language of liberalism can be used to dismantle it. Suffragists successfully did the former. The globally resurgent radical right is succeeding in a strategy of normalisation that is achieving the latter. What I am saying is that within liberalism, which is caught between needing the empire for its political survival and being at odds with the fact of empire in its moral system, there is a particular rhetorical trick that hides the empire from liberal eyes. Even today, we western liberal subjects deflect when it comes to the existence of this connection.

I use Jeanne Morefield’s concept of “imperial deflections” (Morefield, 2014). She defines an imperial deflection as “drawing critical attention away from the liberal empire’s illiberalism by insisting upon its fundamental character.” It’s a bit like a magic trick: showing you the card by acknowledging the empire’s illiberal acts, and then drawing the attention away from it. Morefield examines British liberal thinkers around WWI and US liberal thinkers post 9/11 to show how the liberal justifications of empire are surprisingly similar in both instances. In both pre-WWI Britain and post 9/11 America, liberals insist it is impossible for them to act illiberally—because they have always been liberal, because they are at heart liberal, or because the long arc of history bends towards a liberal society in both cases. It is these deflections we can see Goodsir employ in the show, at different times, and with different degrees of success.

Goodsir as an Audience Surrogate

At numerous junctures in the show, we are encouraged to view the world we are presented with through Goodsir’s eyes. He, like the viewer, has never been to the Arctic, and approaches it with a sense of wonder. The audience is encouraged to empathise with him through small moments that endear him to us (such as when he insists that he, too, can haul the boat-sledge in 1x02 and promptly falls over, inexperienced at hauling as he is.) In episode 1x02 Goodsir as a viewpoint character also becomes explicit when we hear his testimony after what happened to Lieutenant Gore. Although all members of the sledge party are interviewed offscreen, it is his point of view that we hear and believe, and that helps us makes sense of what we just saw happen. The fact that the captains interviewing him are sceptical of his account just solidifies putting the audience in his corner.

What most solidifies Goodsir as an audience surrogate, however, is his ideology and therefore his position in the show as a “modern” character. My argument is that it’s precisely Goodsir’s liberalism that allows us to identify with him.

Goodsir as a Liberal Subject

Goodsir’s role as a scientist (an anatomist first, and then also a doctor) position him closest to Post-Enlightenment liberal ideas about scientific progress, rationality, and also a new form of masculinity. Goodsir is a decidedly “modern” character, especially when contrasted with other characters: Goodsir is less set in his ways than most of them. While describing the bear prints, for example, the captains are dismissive of his description while Goodsir is sceptical but not dismissive of the idea that the bear could have tracked them to the ship. (He is, of course, very set in other ways, for example in his total embrace of class hierarchies.) He is also positioned in contrast to Stanley’s overt racism when Stanley refuses to perform surgery on Silna’s father.**

Goodsir’s approach to life is informed by his belief in science. We are given little hints throughout the show that approaching things from a detached, scientific angle gives him comfort. When David Young dies, Goodsir is distressed, but the first thing he does is check Young’s pulse. Similarly, he can perform Young’s autopsy only after covering his face, reducing him from “person” to “body.” His account of Gore’s killing, likewise, is focussed on the observable details and reads more like a scientific report than a report from a man who witnessed a traumatic event.

This rationality and distance from emotion is also indicative of an alternative masculinity. The show contrasts Goodsir’s liberal masculinity with the more familiar “male warrior” masculinity of the sailors that surround him. In episode 1x03, Goodsir’s demand of an escort back to the ships is played for a laugh, though immediately undercut when the Tuunbaq does attack the hunting blind, leaving him the character with the more realistic risk assessment. Goodsir embodies an alternative hegemonic masculinity: a liberal masculinity that expresses itself not in outbursts of aggression but in a distancing from emotion. When Goodsir seeks to test his lead poisoning theory, for example, he entices Jacko with gentle words to eat from the food he suspects to be poisonous. He is aware that—should his theory be correct—he is killing the monkey. We are reminded of his gentle words to David Young and realise, perhaps, that his gentleness is not backed up with a deep concern for the person/animal he speaks to. In both cases, the knowledge that can be extracted from dead bodies supersedes sentimentality. Neither masculinity, one might extrapolate from that, offers a way out of the predicament these men find themselves in. Neither can serve as the basis of a new kind of living with each other.

Goodsir’s Liberal Deflections of Empire

Goodsir’s character is an interesting case of nominative determinism. There obviously was a historical Harry Goodsir, but this is not the man we are looking at. We are looking at the fictional “good sir” who was, at first glance, written as the only good man among imperialists. At second glance, however, his name itself becomes an imperial deflection. While other characters make their investment in empire clear from the beginning, Goodsir’s is perhaps harder to spot. Sir John has already failed at one imperial endeavour and is adamant to prove himself. Fitzjames’s stories illustrate that he has no qualms with the mission of empire. But at various points in the show, Goodsir is seen to express discomfort with the logic of action that imperialism dictates. He wants to save Silna’s father (even though he ends up making things worse for him and the crew in the long run.) He expresses discomfort at the treatment of the body of Silna’s father, while he himself tries to be respectful of Inuit customs (though, once again, making things worse by burying his charms with him.) When Francis wants to ask Silna how to kill the Tuunbaq, Goodsir does not translate the question, perhaps out of a sense that “these matters are quite private in her culture.” It is because of this discomfort that Goodsir becomes the prime apologist of empire. The other characters do not feel like they have anything to be sorry for, and therefore do not need to invent justifications. Goodsir employs these justifications at various moments in the show, but two instances stand out for their similarity in phrasing and context, and the differing extent to which Goodsir believes them.

The first instance of an imperial deflection is when Goodsir brings supper to Silna. She has just been kidnapped by Hickey, Hartnell and Manson. When Goodsir introduces himself to Silna, he has a first moment of realization of the meaning and scope of empire and his place in it. He explains their purpose (“For our economy. For trade.”) and seems to have a moment of self-awareness that those are neither good reasons for dying nor for killing. A moment later he points at himself, hoping to introduce himself. “Goodsir,” he says, which is both his name and also an insistence that while the policies that brought him here may be flawed, the men sent to die were good men, not deserving of the scorn we direct at them for the imperial policy they carry out. “This is not how Englishmen act,” he says, despite evidence to the contrary that Englishmen have, in fact, just acted this way. This is the first instance of a textbook liberal deflection: insisting on the character over the actions of empire. What does it matter for Silna that he means well? The helplessness is emphasised by the abrupt ending of the episode after Goodsir’s desperate introduction.

The second time Goodsir insists on the character of Empire over its actions is in quite a different context. A hunting party has just massacred an Inuit family, people that Silna knew, and now Silna is being exiled from Terror Camp. Goodsir knows that it’s safer for her to go, but selfishly wants her to stay. He feels for her, and perhaps feels he must offer some sort of apology for the behaviour of his co-nationals. Then he tells her: “I wish you could come to England and see for yourself. It’s not like we are here. People there are good.” Once again, he insists on the fundamental character—the “English” character—of the empire that exculpates them from the crimes they commit abroad. But even in the speaking, he appears to realise the futility of this deflection. This second deflection is followed by a word spoken in Inuktitut for which no translation is provided.*** Silna reacts with a small smile and a nod of her head. The choice not to subtitle or translate Goodsir’s last word to Silna can be read in various ways, but it remains first and foremost a place to which we—the liberal audience at home—cannot follow Goodsir, who has been our surrogate up to this point, implying perhaps that he has taken a step that we have yet to take in confronting our own imperialism.

Both of Goodsir’s deflections follow violence done to Silna (or threatened against her.) In the first instance, it’s her kidnapping by Hickey and his associates for which Goodsir first apologises, then makes excuses; in the second instance it’s the violence that will be done to her should she return to Terror Camp, as well as the violence done to other Inuit. In both cases, it’s Goodsir’s job to draw attention away from the liberal empire’s illiberal actions by insisting on its liberal character. The extent to which he succeeds—or fails—opens up these liberal deflections of empire for us. Goodsir is not an uncritical liberal audience surrogate. I watched The Terror for the first time during the March 2020 lockdown, and hearing “For our economy. For trade.” hit hard for me as a person living under a capitalist system where economic necessity is continuously valued over human life. Goodsir realises, in justifying, the hollowness of some of his justifications, even as he fervently holds on to others.

Goodsir stays alive long enough to witness all the ways that Englishmen may act, and is made to participate in them. His disillusionment with his co-nationals at the end is nearly complete. But his commitment to liberalism, I would argue, remains.

In the end, Goodsir returns to science. His final vision is that of the beauty that no doubt inspired his career, the wonder that he told Crozier he still feels. But it’s also a vision that remains within the ordered boundaries of the liberal empire: the specimens are foreground on a white background, they are separated from nature, standing contextless and only for themselves. Goodsir’s final vision is that of the liberal imperial project, realised.

* When I write “we,” I am, of course, aware that not everyone reading this falls under the umbrella of Western liberal subjects that this “we” assumes. Like Goodsir as an audience surrogate, this “we” hopes to function as a mirror of reflection for our own deflections of empire. I do not understand myself as a “liberal,” certainly not in the sense that most US-Americans use the term. I see liberalism as the bedrock of how we do politics in the 21st century. In that sense, we are all “liberals.” From the position of someone who is a “liberal,” as a subject of a liberal democracy, I do not exempt myself from the category of people that has, at various points in their lives, made excuses for empire, knowingly or unknowingly. These rhetorical strategies, so ingrained in how we talk about who we are, make it all-too-easy to fall into the trap of convincing ourselves that there is something redeemable at the heart of our empires. We must make these strategies explicit to recognise their falsity.

** Stanley’s refusal did not come out of an assessment of the futility of the procedure, which might have spared Silna’s father further suffering. In that sense, both Goodsir (in his belief that his knowledge can save the man) and Stanley (in his racist refusal of medical aid) fail Silna and her father, because neither of them centre the well-being of the man.

*** I am aware that you can find this translation in many metas written about it. Do not come into my comments to tell me what it means. I looked it up.

Bibliography

Bell, D., 2014. What is Liberalism. Political Theory 42, 682–715.

Hooper, C., 2001. Masculinities in International Relations, in: Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 79–116.

Mehta, U.S., 1999. Liberalism and Empire. A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

so his dad was a gunsmith in westminster & henry was the younger sibling of two (elizabeth was a few years older than him, and she also received henry's arrears from the franklin expedition after everyone was pronounced lost & dead. she was married at this time and was henry's immediate next of kin. so presumably their parents had died by this point...) but he and elizabeth got dunked in a 2-for-1 baptism like john torrington & his sister did tho which is so funny. pov you have one baby and underestimated how much work babies actually are, so you forget to get it baptized on time, and then by the second baby rolls around you've got a better grip on parenting, so you take both kids in on the same day. lmfao.

anyways back to the childhood tho. they lived like... a few blocks away from the river thames so he'd probably already had a fondness for water, i think, just based on my own childhood of having two older brothers and living near a semi-important river (lol)

but that made me wonder if like... he and elizabeth ever played army...? because i definitely was made by my brothers to play army and soldiers a fair amount. and if my dad was a gunsmith and i was an opinionated little freakboy who wanted to be a navy sailor when i was older, i'd definitely try and sneak into dad's work and play pretend a little bit. and i wonder if sarah peglar (mum) ever scolded him for not including elizabeth or vice versa when they was out playing with the neighborhood kids...

they lived in a pretty well-populated neighborhood and he attended the blewcoat school "for poor families" WHICH ALSO ALLOWED GIRLS TO ATTEND so maybe henry and elizabeth went there together. cmon get up we have to walk to school on timeeeee. i think he was probably a little bit dyslexic tho based on how his spelling was in 1845-47... i think the only formal education for reading and writing would have been at this blewcoat school in westminster , so i wonder if the writing backwards was a trick he pulled out to impress his classmates... don't notice how bad his spelling test grade was!! just look how cool and clever harry is!!! he can write a whole paragraph backwards!!!! whoaaah!!!! idk i just hope he had a gang of friends he was running about and causing silly lad antics with. i hope elizabeth followed them around and was begrudgingly included in the antics because they were supposed to be keeping an eye on each other during the afternoons or something. based on the amount of times he mentions keeping an eye on his friends on terror / mentions tom by name in the wallet papers i think it's not too hard to imagine henry was protective over people he loved.... i assume this extended to his sister, too. also like.. not that this was his childhood necessarily, but his dad's gunsmith shop was literally down the road from the big ben clocktower which would have been under construction (1843) during the same time he was ashore between ships (post hms wanderer & pre hms terror) so i wonder if he ever went home to visit the family and was like FUCCKKK SORRY I'M LATE FOR DINNER TRAFFIC SUCKED. CONSTRUCTION FOR THAT CLOCK IS SO ANNOYING. that would be very funny to me.

ok anyways back to childhood: john peglar (henry & elizabeth's dad) voted for francis burdett so there's at least some indication that their household was like... fine with being politically radical and heavily opinionated. (i would also point out that there's a fair amount in henry's wallet and diary that's just him having a gossip session by himself. opinionated indeed.) but also henry doesn't seem the type to really get into trouble tho... based on his career history he generally rolled his eyes kept his head down and did his job unless he was pushed hard enough, in which case he had no problem speaking out. in 1833 on the marquis camden, henry was lashed two dozen times for "drunkenness and mutinous conduct" but i've also read that the captain of the ship at the time was a Notorious Asshole Who Loved To Use Lashing As Punishment? so jumping to conclusions without real evidence, i think henry probably saw his fellow ABs getting treated badly by the captain, had 3 more beers than he should have, and said FUCK THIS GUYYYY!!!!!!! and then got punished for it. we're not going to think about the lashing scars opening back up again in the arctic btw. so anyways the point of all this is to say i think henry was probably fine with protesting when things suck, which he probably learned from his dad. maybe there were nights when john and sarah were talking politics and henry sat on the other side of the wall listening when he wasn't supposed to. maybe elizabeth would come sit with him and he'd have to shush her because neither of them were supposed to be listening because it was past their bedtimes but they sat and listened together anyways. scurried back into bed trying not to get caught even though john and sarah definitely knew they were there.

but also he was 13 when he entered the marine society ("a charitable organization for helping destitute boys and training seamen") so maybe he saw the navy as a chance to help out his lower-middle class family..... maybe they had a hard time and henry wanted to help out now that he was sort of almost grown up!!! and he clearly excelled thru this sailor training camp because after a month they tossed him onto hms solebay where he would have learned more hands-on stuff about working on a ship. knots and such. maybe this is where he realized how good he was with ropes... he could have been the best lad in his "class" when it came to knots etc. he also would have learned properly how to use a gun here, but again, his dad's a gunsmith. he probably would have had an experience advantage over most of the other boys w/ shooting and loading and managing a gun as a tool. so it's not surprising i think that he was in and out of 'training camp' really quickly. his first real ship was hms clio and he was a spare ship's boy and quickly got transferred to hms magnificent, WHICH WAS A HOSPITAL SHIPPPP and worked in the sickbay as a ship's boy and was earning a real paycheck. in my heart this was probably a very formative experience, and gave him a basic understanding of medicine/nursing? which i bet came in handy during the expedition when things were getting desperate and everyone was sick. i know amc had bridgens playing pinch-hitter nurse for terror camp but i wonder if in real life, maybe henry took up that role? maybe he even managed to keep his own illness under wraps for longer than most of the other expedition men Because he could recall things he learned on hms magnificent... idk.....

anyways at this point we start getting into henry's teen years. does this count as childhood? he saw two men get killed by lightning strike at age ~16 and he jumped around between ships pretty often and his conduct was generally either 1) bored and unremarkable or 2) normal and good :) and then he got lashed for being a petulant "mutinous" teenager who likes beer too much, as previously mentioned, and afterwards he just kind of hangs out until he's 22 and joins the gannett and meets 💞thomas armitage💞 and now i need to stop typing . lest i begin rpf-ing on main a little bit too much.