The Geographical Assocation and its Presidents: Sir Clements Markham

Sunday 24 November 2019

Sir Clements Markham - a detour

While researching the early period of the GA, the name Clements Markham kept appearing.
He was not particularly linked with the GA, but would certainly have spent some time working with other GA Presidents.
The first pictures shows Markham aged 25, when he was elected to the Royal Geographical Society. At the bottom is a picture of him later in life.
It's a reminder of the close links between the GA and the RGS (later the RGS-IBG) which have persisted from the early meetings of the GA, and the use of RGS premises following the war.
Clements Markham was the Honorary Secretary of the RGS from 1863-1888 and later President for a further 12 years.
The Royal Society provides further details on his impressive geographical credentials:

He was mainly responsible for organising the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901–04, and for launching the polar career of Robert Falcon Scott, who named a peak Mount Markham in Antarctica in his honour.

Markham began his career as a Royal Naval cadet and midshipman, during which time he went to the Arctic with HMS Assistance in one of the many searches for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin.

Markham served as a geographer to the India Office, and was responsible for the collection of cinchona plants from their native Peruvian forests, and their transplantation in India. By this means the Indian government acquired a home source from which quinine could be extracted.

Markham also served as geographer to Sir Robert Napier's Abyssinian expeditionary force, and was present in 1868 at the fall of Magdala.

The main achievement of Markham's RGS presidency was the revival at the end of the 19th century of British interest in Antarctic exploration, after a 50-year interval. He had strong and determined ideas about how the National Antarctic Expedition should be organised, and fought hard to ensure that it was run primarily as a naval enterprise, under Scott's command. To do this he overcame hostility and opposition from much of the scientific community. In the years following the expedition he continued to champion Scott's career, to the extent of disregarding or disparaging the achievements of other contemporary explorers.

He was also linked with the Hakluyt Society.

This film from the BFI shows the visit of the President of Peru to the RGS, and laying a wreath at Markham's memorial outside the entrance.