{"id":2118,"date":"2026-11-01T20:41:28","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T20:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2026-11-01T20:41:28","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T20:41:28","slug":"tropicality-in-joseph-dalton-hookers-himalayan-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/2026\/11\/tropicality-in-joseph-dalton-hookers-himalayan-journals\/","title":{"rendered":"Tropicality in Joseph Dalton Hooker\u2019s Himalayan Journals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Himalayan Journals<\/em>, written in the year 1854, provides insight into how tropicality was observed and interpreted in South Asia, specifically India, through the lens of foreign travellers. The author of Himalayan Journals<\/em>, Joseph Dalton Hooker, a naturalist and botanist, explores Darjeeling in India. Hooker describes Darjeeling as its own separate haven within India, an environmental refuge of sorts, from other areas in India that had an \u201cunhealthy\u201d climate (like that of the Indian plains). Hooker\u2019s Himalayan Journals<\/em> provides a closer look into colonial perspectives regarding nineteenth-century India. Hooker\u2019s Himalayan Journals<\/em> demonstrates that British colonisers dissected India, divvying up colonial Indian territories into certain sections, with each section categorised into different climatic spaces, with climatic spaces being attached to ideas about health, race, and social organisation. Hooker\u2019s Himalayan Journals<\/em> uses tropicality and environmental conditions in India to categorise which parts of India were dangerous tropical India, versus a temperate, healthy India suitable for European settlement.<\/p>\n

As a British botanist, Hooker, in writing Himalayan Journals<\/em>, shows a thorough knowledge of flora and fauna, weather and climate, and geography. Within Hooker\u2019s account of climate, longstanding British understandings and prejudices about South Asia are also present, particularly through his descriptions of the climate and environment. Hooker first states that in order for Europeans to feel comfortable settling in the British Indian colony, they would need to be assured that the climate was temperate. Hooker writes, \u201cthe health of Europeans may be recruited by a more temperate climate.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> This idea is present throughout Hooker\u2019s writing. While Hooker describes Darjeeling itself, he more frequently focuses on how Darjeeling affects the Europeans inhabiting it. Hooker asserts that statistical data showed \u201cthe value of the climate to Europeans suffering from acute diseases\u201d and argues that European troops arriving in Bengal should not be sent to Calcutta, but instead should be sent to Darjeeling.2<\/a><\/sup> Hooker\u2019s racial prejudices become most apparent when describing Europeans leaving the Indian plains as \u201csickly, pallid or yellow, soft and flabby.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> This line of thought is consistent with Hippocrates\u2019 argument that differences between populations could be explained through their environments. The understanding is that climate, seasonal variation, and geographical location are all influences capable of shaping human health.4<\/a><\/sup> With this understanding also comes the understanding that certain bodies are better suited to certain environments and that movement between different climates can produce illness, further solidifying this significance as well as the distinction between tropical and temperate spaces.<\/p>\n

While the idea that tropical versus temperate spaces could have different effects on one\u2019s health held some merit in certain ways, Hooker\u2019s efforts to repeatedly demonstrate distinctions between these spaces in Himalayan Journals<\/em> also reflected biases. David Arnold asserts that nineteenth-century European travellers writing about India frequently constructed India as a more \u201ctropical\u201d other world. This act of exoticising and overemphasising the \u201ctropicality\u201d of the colonial territories was a commonality amongst many European literary works. The illustration of colonial territories, including those in India, as overly \u201ctropical\u201d and possessing wildly differing climates was often attached to or associated with negative connotations, like, for example, describing a colonial territory\u2019s climate as being \u201cunhealthy.\u201d Contrastingly, the European authors referred to the climate of European countries as the more ideal temperate climate.5<\/a><\/sup> Hooker\u2019s account illustrates this through his description of the plains; instead of it being tropical, it is dangerously so, but the elevated spaces in India are described as being fitting for European settlement.<\/p>\n

The division of climatic spaces reveals racial biases present at the time. In Hooker\u2019s account, he writes, \u201cNatives of the low country, and especially Bengalees, are far from enjoying the climate as Europeans do\u201d; later, Hooker claims that their susceptibility to illness was due to their cultural practices, like those of clothing, diet, and sleep habits.3<\/a><\/sup> Climatic differences then become intertwined with racial distinctions, distinctions that often carry certain negative connotations. Jiat-Hwee Chang\u2019s analysis of tropical architecture examines this distinction as well. Chang argues that the \u201ctropics\u201d should not be understood as a neutral or objective climatic category. Chang writes that this is due to colonial understanding, or rather a lack of understanding, of tropical nature, where racial assumptions, medical knowledge, and practices of governance all interfere with creating an objective picture of tropicality in colonial territories6<\/a><\/sup> Hooker\u2019s description of Darjeeling is demonstrative of this, when certain climates only become a colonial concern or are deemed \u201cunhealthy\u201d or uninhabitable as soon as they affect the Europeans inhabiting them.<\/p>\n

Hooker\u2019s account in Himalayan Journals<\/em> is a prime example of nineteenth-century thinking about the relationship between climate and social\/racial groupings. Darjeeling as a space in Hooker\u2019s account becomes this exception, an isolated space, as opposed to the other unfavourable climates in India (like that of the tropical plains). Descriptions of Darjeeling as elevated, not low, temperate, not tropical, give insight into what exactly foreigners viewed as a liveable environment. Hooker\u2019s insight, combined with the context of thinkers like Hippocrates, further supports this spatial division, describing the importance of different peoples and their unique climatic needs. Again, this understanding is supposedly about climate, but more closely corresponds with race\/social groups, as each race or group of people is blank. Writings such as Hooker\u2019s demonstrate the creation of a colonial geography where certain spaces or environments were assigned a different racial or medical meaning to it.<\/p>\n

  1. Joseph Dalton Hooker Himalayan Journals, <\/em>vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1854), 115. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Hooker, Himalayan Journals<\/em>, vol. I, 119. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Hooker, Himalayan Journals<\/em>, 1:120. [↩<\/a>]<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places<\/em>, XII-XVI, in Hippocrates<\/em> vol. 1, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), 106\u201317. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. David Arnold, The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze<\/em>: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800\u20131856<\/em> (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 42\u201354, 110\u201315. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience<\/em> (London: Routledge, 2016), 5\u201310. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Himalayan Journals, written in the year 1854, provides insight into how tropicality was observed and interpreted in South Asia, specifically India, through the lens of foreign travellers. The author of Himalayan Journals, Joseph Dalton Hooker, a naturalist and botanist, explores Darjeeling in India. Hooker describes Darjeeling as its own separate haven within India, an environmental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[164],"class_list":["post-2118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-southeast-asia","category-uncategorized","tag-south-asia"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2118"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2127,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions\/2127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}