The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering After the Enlightenment by Peter H. Hansen (review)

Peter H. Hansen writes the “modern self is haunted by mountains,” (p. 148) and he lures readers into his text with the seemingly simple question of who was first to climb such famous peaks as Mont Ventoux, Mont Blanc, and Mount Everest. The answer, however, turns out to be anything but straightforward. His careful dissection yields complex insights into the history of mountain climbing and the identity making of modern man, not to mention debunking the myth of solo ascents in the process.

The majority of Hansen’s book focuses on the place of Mount Blanc in the Western European imagination and the debate over who could claim first ascent. He argues that understanding political contexts helps explain Mount Blanc’s symbolic and contested meanings over “who was first,” a question that is linked to notions of the sovereign individual. Was it mountain guide Jacques Balmat who scouted the route in the summer of 1787? Or local doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard who raced Balmat to the top, later that same summer? Or should the accolades go to Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, a wealthy and well-connected intellectual, who wrote about his scientific experiments on the mountain after his ascent on August 3, 1787? Hansen persuasively explains that the debate is more interesting than the answer because shifting notions of agency and citizenship influence the response. For instance, does a poor mountain guide possess the faculties to process the importance of what he does? If not, he can’t truly claim the title, for the title only has legitimacy when rightly understood. Take Henriette D’Angeville for instance, the “first” woman to climb Mount Blanc in 1838. In fact, D’Angeville was the second woman to do so, but the first, peasant Marie Paradis, climbed the mountain for the wrong reasons (notoriety). As D’Angeville put it, Mount Blanc “had not been ascended by any woman capable of remembering her impressions” (p. 172). D’Angeville’s ability to communicate “the force of will!” (p. 173) required to get to the top and what she felt once there was what made the experience matter. In other words, one needed the mental capacity, cultured background, and publications to own the summit. Later, however, with the democratization of Europe, and the reclamation of local culture in the twentieth century, both mountain guide and simple peasant would be celebrated as the first man and woman to summit.

Mount Everest serves as another example of the debates that arose. On May 23, 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, reached the top of the famous peak. The British-led expedition was celebrated in England, but troubling questions of nationality and who was first followed. Hansen notes that “the Everest disputes resembled those on Mont Blanc,” but the “1953 conundrums were rooted in the revision of sovereignty and masculinity at this particular postcolonial moment at the height of the Cold War” (p. 246). In the postcolonial climate of sovereign states and newly granted citizenship what nation could claim the ascent? Did Hillary beat Norgay to the summit and was he English enough to meet heroic ideals? Was Norgay Indian or Nepalese? The modern world that used states as the basis for identity and individual accomplishment as the gold standard of achievement fit uncomfortably on the shoulders of both men — especially since Norgay claimed, “We reached the summit almost together,” (p. 248) and declined to take ownership.

Hansen’s extremely detailed and meticulously researched study successfully shows that people climbed for more than religious or scientific reasons. The breadth of his study enforces his claims that mountain climbing and asking “who was first” reveals how the public and states appropriated mountain ascents for a myriad of reasons, not the least as an assertion of sovereign individuality — the hallmark of the modern democratic state. Whilst Hansen spent a considerable amount of time discussing the guides who were instrumental...