Antarctica has long been held as a place of interest to states. It may be of inter-est to them as the result of a number of goals, which may include the potential for attaining natural resources, attainment of geostrategic ground, the incorpor-ation of further territory into empire, or the converse of denying the territory to other parties. The official U.S. approach to Antarctica has been shaped by the 1924 Hughes ‘open door’ doctrine, articulating that the U.S. makes no claims to Antarctica and simultaneously recognizes no claims26. There was some conflict about this within the U.S. government, but the politics of the Cold War combined with the success of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58 solidified this position and helped to make the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 a document in which claimant and non-claimant nations agreed to work coopera-tively in Antarctica. Within the pages of National Geographic Magazine, the promotion of an American claim to Antarctica has competed with an image of Antarctica as a site of international cooperation in which the U.S. participates.
The rise and fall of the push to claim an American portion of Antarctica has been largely reflected through the use of flags in Antarctica.
The rhetoric surrounding U.S. territorial claims to Antarctica occupied the first part of the twentieth century National Geographic Magazine coverage of the continent, but faded out as the rhetoric of international cooperation swept in and dominated the last half of the last century . Articles in the magazine from 1903 to 1912 argued forcefully for the recognition of American accomplishment in Antarctica and against the subsequent denial of this by scholars from other na-tions27. Although an American claim to portions (if not all) of Antarctica is never stated directly in these articles, the securing of the honors of discovery implies a subsequent basis for claim. More direct references to U.S. claims to territory
23 Coffey and Atkinson 1996.
24 Riessman 2002.
25 This is why I initially presented my findings in a poster format in which the viewer could read and interpret selected quotes on their own against a timeline of the twentieth century (albeit with my own color-coded suggestions of the categories superimposed upon the quotes).
26 Hall 1989.
27 Balch 1903; National Geographic 1903b; Balch 1904; Grosvenor 1907; National Geographic 1908; Greely 1912.
were made a little later by Admiral Richard Byrd and Lincoln Ellsworth28. There are also mentions of other nations claiming dominion over Antarctica and sub-Antarctic islands during this time period29, to the degree that the naming of Antarctic features told a story of the nationalities of those who first encountered them30. In this way, claims are linguistically inscribed upon the landscape and maps that describe it. The last strongly-worded claim to territory comes from a mention of encountering Chileans at Deception Island in December of 195531. After the IGY of 1957-58 and the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, talk of claims be-comes more muted and sterilized. The next time that claims are explicitly men-tioned is in the 1970s , and nations are supposed to “forgo territorial claims to the continent for at least 30 years”32. There is also talk of claims to South Georgia Island being contested between Britain and Argentina, as the Falkland Islands are33. The same article points out that both the United States and Soviet Union share a policy of neither claiming nor acknowledging claim to Antarctic territories. An article encompassing all of Antarctica from 1987 explains to the reader that “National claims are frozen; their boundaries … are relegated to a small inset in our supplement map”34. The term “frozen” here is not only apt because of the cold setting, but it gives the impression of Antarctic claims as biological entities trapped in ice: they still exists (and may be alive or dead), but they are immovable and inactive. The relegation of territorial claims to a small insert also shows their declining importance. This diminishment continued into the 1990s, in which another broad article about Antarctica declared that "The promise - and peril - of Antarctica has been that no one owns it, although seven nations have pressed sometimes overlapping claims"35. The reality stressed in this quote is that no one owns Antarctica, and that claims have only been pressed and not realized.
Claims are one aspect of some national political agendas, but another aspect is international cooperation. Cooperation is a broad term which can involve vary-ing degrees of integration between two groups. The general trend in National Geographic references to cooperation in the Antarctic has been to go from less integrated and cordial to more friendly and involved, particularly in the conduct of scientific activities. Cooperation in Antarctic endeavors has been written about in the magazine as early as 1899, but the cooperation of nations was generally defined as splitting up the Antarctic territory into discrete units such that activities would not overlap36. This form of cooperation was created to avoid unpleasant interactions by avoiding interactions altogether. As the refer-ences to possible American claims grew in number, referrefer-ences to international cooperation faded from view.
References to cooperation in the magazine re-emerged and strengthened with
28 Byrd 1930; National Geographic 1935.
29 National Geographic 1903b; Murphy 1922.
30 McKinley 1932.
31 Bumstead 1955.
32 Matthews 1971: 648.
33 Poncet 1989.
34 Vesilind 1987: 560.
35 Hodgson 1990: 17.
36 Grosvenor 1899; Kollm 1901; National Geographic 1901a; 1901b.
the development of the IGY in the 1950s. Articles referred to scientists from different countries pooling their findings, and noted the free exchange of ideas that was taking place between nations during the “worldwide collaboration” that was the IGY37. This describes an exchange and interaction between nations, rather than simply a division the work of science to be conducted. These activi-ties connote exchange between equals, but convey little enthusiasm for the task. In 1968, “working together” was used to describe the interaction of Rus-sian and American scientists in Antarctica in counterbalance to the Cold War idea that these two groups should be separate38. It implied that something progressive was being accomplished. The term “goodwill” developed to de-scribe the bond between scientists from different nations39. This implied an even more positive connection between the two groups. This increasing idea of friendship and goodwill between people of different nationalities had a cre-scendo within Will Steger’s expedition across Antarctica as he described it:
"Perhaps our expedition - as a small example of multinational effort focused on the last great frontier - would be accepted as a contribu-tion toward the world's new awakening"40.
Through this statement, Steger implies that international cooperation is leading us to a new and better political attitude towards Antarctica and the world.
Flags have stood in as representative for nations at many occasions, and through the use of flags in descriptions of the Antarctic the shift from viewing the continent as a place to be claimed to a site of international cooperation can be seen. Planting a flag in the ground can be seen as a display of personal ac-complishment, but when the flag represents a nation this has long been under-stood as an indicator of claiming a portion of land. That was certainly the intent of Sir Ernest Shackleton (1877-1922) when he raised the flag at the southern-most point in his trip:
"We hoisted his Majesty's flag and the other Union Jack afterwards, and took possession of the plateau in the name of his Majesty"41.
As if by magic, the entire plateau had become British territory through the simple act of inserting the British national flag (nicknamed the Union Jack).
During the period of time before the IGY in which U.S. explorers sought to claim portions of the Antarctic, the planting of the flag was often used as a metaphor for claiming the territory. The U.S. flag is sometimes referred to as
“Old Glory” or “The Stars and Stripes”, and those nicknames were engaged by a number of American explorers as they described their actions and plans to claim parts of Antarctica. The National Geographic Society attempted to garner support for an Antarctic expedition by appealing to the reader’s patriotism in saying that “[t]he primary object of the expedition would be to plant the Stars and Stripes at the South Pole…”42. By placing the U.S. flag at the South Pole first, the potential expedition likely had the goal of establishing a basis for an American claim to the territory. When other nations reached the pole first, other
37 Byrd 1956; National Geographic 1957; Siple 1957.
38 Matthews 1968.
39 Byrd 1956; Matthews 1971; Hamner 1984.
40 Steger 1990: 93.
41 Shackleton 1909: 1000.
42 Grosvenor 1910: 170.
undiscovered sites in Antarctica became prone to flag-planting. Lincoln Ells-worth (1888-1951), an American Antarctic explorer, boasted in the magazine that he had raised an American flag over 350,000 square miles of the last un-claimed land on earth and named it after his father43.
Besides existing as a symbol to claim territory, flags were used in Antarctica for symbolic gestures which signified the changing attitudes towards nations in the Antarctica from claimants to cooperators. Although the pole had already been flagged through a land traverse, this did not stop Admiral Richard Byrd (1888-1957) from using a flag to mark the occasion of the first flight over the South Pole. He brought along the flags of Norway and Britain to honor the first two explorers to reach the South Pole, but reserved a unique honor for the U.S. flag which he brought along when he reached the air above the Pole:
“We opened the trapdoor and dropped the American flag, weighted by the stone from Bermett's44 grave. We saluted our country's flag and the spirit of our gallant comrade”45.
Although not strictly a territorial claim, it does mark the first supposed flight over the South Pole as an American achievement. What gives this event added poignancy is contrasting it to the flag symbolism used by Byrd at a subsequent flight over the South Pole:
“I dropped a cardboard box containing the multicolored little flags of the United Nations. The symbolism should be obvious- the dedication of this goal of so much selfless heroism of the Norwegians and the British to the ideal of brotherhood among peoples"46.
This act symbolizing “brotherhood among peoples” was to herald the develop-ment of the IGY and an increase in the rhetoric of international cooperation within the National Geographic’s portrayals of Antarctica. The first person to scale Antarctica’s highest peak built on Byrd’s symbolic example and planted the 12 flags of the Antarctic Treaty nations at the top of the mountain47. The use of multiple flags in these areas high above the rest of Antarctica had come to signal the international cooperation that was taking place below them.