Journeys to Empire is an account of two missions sent to Tibet from British India: that of George Bogle in 1774–75, and the military expedition led by Sir Francis Younghusband in 1903–4. Gordon T. Stewart examines the missions to derive lessons about changes in British attitudes toward the world and peoples of empire. In brief, he presents Bogle as a product of the Enlightenment, particularly the Scottish Enlightenment, while Younghusband looms as an aggressive imperialist bolstered by a strong evangelical Christian disdain for the Buddhist clerics dominating Tibet. But the portraits he draws are far more complex than this would suggest.
Early on, Stewart acknowledges the theoretical work of Edward Said, but almost immediately, he (correctly) modifies his comments with a caveat about the dogmatic rigidity that has built up around it. Still, Stewart sometimes seems inconsistent in viewing his subjects as representative of their particular places, times, and circumstances,...
