Explorers: Conquest and Calamity: A Timewatch Guide

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Series looking at how the BBC has revealed and interpreted great moments in our history.

Series looking at how the BBC has revealed and interpreted monumental moments in our history. Using the BBC archive, the programmes examine changes in research covered in documentary television.

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Faramerz Dabhoiwala

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A Timewatch Guide: Series 4: Explorers: Conquest and Calamity

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Explorers: Conquest and Calamity

Series 4

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How our attitude towards the age of exploration has changed over time.

How our attitude towards the age of exploration has changed, from marvelling at incredible tales of adventure to the consequences of conquest.

For centuries the story of exploration has been packed with incredible tales of adventure, but the last fifty years has seen a dramatic shift in our attitude towards explorers. 

To find out how television has reflected this, Prof Fara Dabhoiwala delves into the BBC television archives, revealing that the pace of this change was faster than you would imagine. In the 1960s the BBC was still making programmes showing Christopher Columbus as an uncomplicated conquering hero. Barely a decade later, it made a documentary that delved into museum storerooms packed with artefacts brought back to Britain by Captain Cook, focusing on the perspective of the explored rather than the explorer.

As the story of exploration became as much about social calamity as conquest, television has been forced to find new ways to portray explorers. By the 21st century this included everything from focusing on adventurers like Ernest Shackleton, famous not for conquest but for saving the lives of his men, to using new technology to demystify exploration by making programmes from material shot by the explorers themselves.

A Timewatch Guide: Series 4

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Explorers: Conquest and Calamity

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