Marginal voices, ethnographic judgement and antiquarian self-definition in Edward Daniel Clarke's Travels

This chapter examines the intertwining of ethnographic judgement and antiquarian self-definition in Edward Daniel Clarke’s six volumes of Travels (published between 1810 and 1824). It takes as its starting point Clarke’s representation of an Albanian family who gave him hospitality and guided him around the battlefield at Plataea. It argues that that passage is valuable as a relatively unusual attempt to construct a positive image of the antiquarian knowledge of a low-status population that is more often denigrated by other northern European travellers. It also argues, however, that we need to be cautious about adopting an idealised view of Clarke’s ethnographic sensitivity: when we read his work from end to end (including not only the sections in Greece, which still tend to be read in isolation, but also the material on Scandinavia, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere), it becomes clear that one function of this passage and others like it is as a foil to Clarke’s denigration of many of the other peoples he encounters. That denigration tends to be particularly vehement for those who, unlike the Albanians, obstruct his goal of collecting antiquities and geological samples on an enormous scale, which he represents as a heroic project of knowledge-ordering and preservation.