From the perspective of Dutch citizens in the 21st century, the expeditions of the previous century seem more and more controversial. Only in March 2020 the king of the Netherlands publicly apologized for the violence in Indonesia in 1947 and 1948 in which over 100.000 Indonesian citizens lost their lives because of military violence by the Dutch. These apologies did not cover the colonial oppression of the previous years from 1798. Before 1798, successful expeditions by the Dutch had led to the establishment of an impressive, yet violent, trading network in South-East Asia. The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) is an organization that still holds fame in the Netherlands and is frequently used by politicians to draw attention to the mentality of the Dutch people.
Expeditions are currently seen as something from the age of imperial conquest, which gives it a bitter taste too often sweet tales of romantic and heroic stories from men who went to extreme lengths to reach unknown destinations. These often included endurances that most of us can hardly imagine. Some of us might suffer a few hours in a paid Iron Man Experience, and some people might hate their jobs, it usually does not compare with a tropical disease, hypothermia, and loss of life.
The authors of the paper we discuss here distinguish explorations from expeditions. They argue that explorations have a structured practice of mobile knowledge production which could objectively better the scientific field and be of potential worth for that environment. On the contrary, we find expeditions that find a rood in the Latin word “expeditio” which means “voyage of war”. That word embodies the military-intellectual objective of conquering truth itself, along with almost anything the crew can find. By the beginning of the 20th century, the decline of the great expeditions had started, with only very remote places left on the map and the great wars in Europe had put this practice to a lower degree of attention.
In the 19th century, the arrival of ships made of steel became the framework for science. This is interesting because the logbooks that are common on ships served as the benchmark for scientific research, the botanical scientists that traveled along were particularly interested in findings plants that grew well on ships to feed the crew during long journeys. Astronomical findings did not just serve the scientist, it was promoted because the Royal Navy benefited from improved astronomical navigation.
After the first wave of explorative expeditions, the wave of civilizing missions grew very large and put the harmless and friendly locals to work. The authors mention here that a branch of the expeditions used science as a cover-up for the conquest of new territory. During the 20th century, the expeditions lost a major part of it is the military component of the traditional expeditions. The Feminist approach in the 20th century begins to focus wider than the destination itself while participating in expeditions. This approach meant that not just the source of an unknown river, but the shadow of their potential got far more attention. This opened up a whole new perspective on the expeditions.
The authors of this paper also draw attention to the knowledge that can be found through expeditions. Hence, we can carefully close the gap between the decline of expeditions and the wide establishment of foreign direct investment in countries of which most have been previously owned by European countries. We can take the expeditions as a tool for social sciences to the healthy business practices we aim for today.
What can the curious executive learn from this?
For a long time, FDI has been an extension of colonization by the means of cheap labor and ownership of local resources. Now that the world has become globalized and interconnected more and more countries are gaining bargaining power because of ownership. However, in many countries, this remains utopia to most low-wage workers. As our expeditions have had a gradual development into becoming a force for co-creation that not just serves the members and funders of the expedition, but equally serves the region it discovers, a large number of multinationals seems uninterested in lifting people out of poverty that is at the end of their production lines. It usually allocates responsibility to the owners of the factory that is supplying them. Yet, here comes the problem with bargaining power that has been taken from them since we colonized and introduced capitalism. You can compare this situation to starting each football game at the World Cup with a 3–0 deficit. But there is hope, as the World Cup, you can get hold of talent, information, and resources much faster than previously was possible. This enables countries that previously faced oppression to quickly adjust and reach for trade and small levels utopia.
By no means, we are much better of now than in the past 250 years with exploitation still going on.
Hopes for the future are increasing a lot because of the efforts of NGOs, sustainability initiatives and fair-trade companies that aim to restore some of our ancestral missteps and guide the global economy to a more prosperous whole, which is beneficial to our society as well. And you don’t just need a friendly system, the Chinese economy has put itself at the center of the world by leveraging hard work, innovation, and the possibility to contribute value to the richest companies in the world and is now a force that dominates all the financial newspapers.
Since the more service-oriented business that dominates our current Western business paradigm can flourish on all corners of the planet, including the regions that currently live in poverty and live of the small profits of commodities we consume. Our hotels and boat-tours would be full of Colombian banana-farmers and our theme-parks filled with children that roam the plains of the cocoa-plants in Côte d’Ivoire. This would skyrocket the western service-industry while simultaneously filling loads of people with the same joy that we get to experience. In the end, we see the development of expeditions to a better way of doing business.
Full credit goes to Noam Lesham and Alasdair Pinkerton as the authors of the original paper. This article oversimplifies some of the original content to create quick and easy understanding. The one-and-only aim of this paper is to further promote it’s content to a wider audience. For the original paper please visit: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132518768413
About:
Bram van Kleef is a International Business Consultant @ VanKleef/Andersson and is located in Amsterdam. He holds an MSc in Business Administration: International Business & Marketing from the Kristianstad University in Sweden. For inquiries: Bram@vankleefandersson.com
