Himalayan Mountaineering, Imperial Masculinity and Altitude Records Before Everest

ABSTRACT Across the nineteenth century, European surveyors, explorers and mountaineers often sought to constitute the Himalaya as spaces of imperial duty, escape from civilisation, and manly experiences against and in nature. Rather than focusing on the homosociality of the better known climbing ventures of the twentieth century, this article instead considers the period before Mount Everest became the main prize. In particular, it examines an eclectic mix of Himalayan expeditions that made claims to the world ‘altitude record’: that is, the highest height ever climbed above sea level. The different ways that climbers discussed and doubted these record-seeking climbs in their accounts, and especially in talks at the Royal Geographical Society in London, provide a series of snapshots into manly self-fashioning around suffering and self-reliance at the edge of the British Empire. Here the masculinities of non-European guides and porters (especially Gurkhas) also always provided both a foil and a challenge. Ultimately, attempts on the altitude record reveal the way that casting the Himalaya as a space for the narration of masculine ideals and imperial expansion could be both mutually reinforcing and in conflict. Expressions of homosociality nevertheless also shifted across the nineteenth century, with the filling in of the last ‘blank spaces’ on the map seemingly narrowing the canvas for manly outdoor experiences. This was compounded by the way the Himalaya were constituted and maintained as spaces for manly experiences in part by the exclusion of women, even as women like Fanny Bullock Workman were themselves climbing towards record heights.


Introduction
Across the nineteenth century, European surveyors, naturalists, adventurers, diplomats, artists, hunters and -eventually -mountaineers were all drawn to the high Himalaya.While they climbed for a range of reasons, they overwhelmingly shared the characteristic of being men.In turn, they variously constituted the Himalaya as spaces of masculine heroism, imperial duty, and homosocial camaraderie.By the beginning of the twentieth century, the highest mountains in the world were increasingly also idealised as spaces for escaping 'civilisation', and for manly experience against and in nature.This was especially so in light of growing concern that the Alps were being 'overrun' by women and tourists.The masculine tropes around mountain climbing and Victorian manliness imported to the Himalaya from the Alpsincluding strength, courage, discipline, self-control, self-reliance and good humour -nevertheless had to be modified in light of imperial needs on a complex frontier, which had long restricted access to much of Nepal and Tibet.They also had to be reconfigured in response to the masculinity of 'others', notably the guides and porters that all Himalayan expeditions depended on in the mountains.
Rather than focusing on the better known and well-studied mountaineering ventures when Everest became the main prize -including the infamous disappearance of Mallory and Irvine in 1924, and Tenzing and Hillary's eventual successful ascent in 1953 -this article instead focuses on masculinity and Himalayan mountaineering in an earlier period. 1In particular, I examine a series of expeditions that made a claim to the 'world altitude record'; that is, the highest height above sea level that a human -seemingly inevitably male -body had ever climbed. 2 These include the expeditions of William Woodman Graham and his Swiss guides Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann on Kabru in 1883, which was plagued by doubts around whether they had actually climbed the mountain they thought they had; William Martin Conway and the prolific Swiss guide Mattias Zurbriggen on the 'Pioneer Peak' in 1892, a claim based on limited barometer readings and quickly downgraded; and finally, Tom Longstaff, the Bocherel brothers and the Gurkha guide Karbir Burathoki on Trisul in 1907, perhaps the only climb in this list about which the height was undisputed at the time of the ascent and since. 3s these various doubts and downgradings indicate, the 'world altitude record' was always a fraught category.In particular, claims to the record tended to be complicated by the great difficulty of measuring altitude accurately with portable instruments -especially unreliable aneroid barometers -even into the twentieth century.This perhaps explains why the pursuit of this record never really became a formalised imperial and nationalistic competition, at least until Everest was a serious possibility, or one that captured the attention of the public in quite the same manner as the contemporary race for the poles.That being said, the notion of an altitude record was frequently raised, even if the manly propriety of chasing it -or at least openly admitting doing so -was often a vexed question.The different ways that climbers discussed, doubted, downplayed and celebrated the altitude record in their accounts, and in talks at the Royal Geographical Society, thus opens a window into masculine self-fashioning around suffering, risk and self-reliance, and their mutually reinforcing entanglements with scientific and imperial knowledge making at the edge of the British Empire.
If perhaps once an understudied strand of gender analysis, masculinities have received significant attention from historians in recent years. 4Historians of science have considered, for example, how masculinity was delineated via the systemic exclusion of women, and how embodied scientific practices cast the male body as both explicitly and implicitly normative. 5A full history of exploration and empire -of which mountaineering was a part -likewise cannot be told without reference to the development, maintenance and policing of masculine cultures and expectations.In a now classic study in relation to field sciences, Bruce Hevly meanwhile demonstrated the importance of 'muscular exertion' and 'manly risk' in establishing authority in scientific debates around glacier motion, where the 'rhetoric of adventure' became 'an important element in the culture of field science, one claiming reliable perception on the basis of authentic, rigorous, manly experience', which also had the direct effect of disqualifying women. 6This authority by manly experience became central to the way that explorers acted, saw themselves, and crucially, how they constructed their experiences for popular consumption in the press and travel narratives. 7ndeed, Michael Robinson argues that in the nineteenth century 'polar exploration had come to represent a place of manly contest rather than scientific investigation' and a space for 'teaching lessons about national character and traits of manliness'. 8hese wide-ranging insights have increasingly been embraced by historians of mountains, especially in relation to climbing in the Alps.Here Michael Reidy shows how in these climbs 'physical privation and mental acuity were rarely disassociated from questions of gender'. 9Another key strand of literature considers the role of mountains and modernity, and the place of ideas of manliness in changing attitudes to nature and 'civilisation', as well as ideas of the sublime. 10This has dealt especially with national identity in imperial contexts, and here Peter Bayers argues that 'by performing heroic acts on the empire's frontiers, these adventurous males not only reinforced and justified imperial ideologies … they also simultaneously represented manly exemplars against which English males could measure their masculinity'. 11This was particularly emphasised given a growing perception that men in urban, industrialised cities were becoming 'soft'.Masculinity in the particular context of Himalayan mountaineering remains somewhat less studied than in the Alps, although there has been considerable recent work on the twentieth century.This has particularly addressed the lure of Everest, and especially the fateful climb of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine in 1924. 12Here Julie Rak shows how Mallory's body became 'an ideal that prevents mountaineering in its idealized form from being more inclusive, more diverse and more intersectional', an outcome 'founded in the characterization of Western masculinity as a normative identity which needs no reflection'. 13espite always being exclusionary, notions of masculinity in relation to mountaineering were never static, but had to be constantly produced, reinforced and revised.This article examines these shifts by tracing the way homosociality and masculinity were forged, maintained and represented in relation to imperial climbing in pursuit of the world altitude record.The focus is especially on mountaineering lectures at the Royal Geographical Society, and associated publications, as these were the forums which became central to the setting and revision of manly expectations around climbing both in Britain and on the frontiers of the British Empire.Here I especially consider self-fashioning around 'suffering' and 'risk' in the outdoor spaces of the mountains, how willingness to admit bodily weakness and vulnerability changed over time, and how expectations of manly performance -and even ideal body types -might differ among members of expedition parties.
In a key difference to the Alps, climbing narratives from the Himalaya also always had to account for the omnipresence of non-European bodies, and cross-cultural masculinities could both reinforce and complicate ideas about Victorian manliness. 14Here the 'outdoor' spaces of the mountains provided the scope to elevate some guides -such as the Gurkhas Karbir Burathoki and Harkbir Thapa -to the status of manly companions, and encompass them in the language of homosocial friendship, although these were never not also mediated by paternalism and other forms of racial and 'civilisational' discourse.This extended to the homosociality of camp life, as the nature of Himalayan mountaineering meant that rigid separation between bodies, especially in relation to sleeping arrangements and food, could not be as easily or as strictly kept as in other imperial spaces in the lowlands.Not all non-European masculinities were considered equal, however, and this article also considers the development of hierarchies between guides and non-climbing party members (i.e. the porters or 'coolies') who were often depicted as weak, lazy and craven.These also echoed wider colonial ethnographies of allegedly 'martial races', and the supposed manliness of hillmen, usually in contrast to depictions of plains dwellers as 'effeminate'. 15s in the other outdoor activities examined in this special issue that provided opportunities to reinforce, delineate and police masculinities in the Age of Empire, maintaining the high Himalaya as spaces for manly experience was realised in part by the exclusion of women.The appearance of women was often used to signal the domestication of parts of the Himalaya, defined by altitude to the lower slopes, or by region as in the case of Kashmir.In turn, these apparent encroachments were linked to concerns about mass tourism arriving from the Alps, and sometimes moody reflections on the age of 'Geography Triumphant', with the filling in of the last 'blank spaces' on the map seemingly narrowing the canvas for manly outdoor experiences and the opportunities for using these to reinforce and promote manly identities and imperial and national values around the turn of the twentieth century.This was despite, as the final section of this article examines, women like the American adventurer Fanny Bullock Workman also climbing very high in the Himalaya, and indeed in 1906 very nearly making the women's altitude record the altitude record.
Ultimately, this article argues that the development of the mountains as spaces for the cultivation of masculine ideals and imperial consolidation in the Himalaya were mutually reinforcing.The forms and expression of manly experience in the outdoor spaces of the mountains nevertheless shifted across the nineteenth century, as the Himalaya went from mostly unknown to mostly known on European maps.They were also adjusted in relation to changing understandings of scientific phenomena like altitude sickness, as well as shifting racial and racist attitudes.It was similarly the case that these masculinities were never entirely hegemonic, and there was scope for Europeans operating in 'outdoor' spaces of empire to adopt and fashion more than one sort of masculine presentation, even within the same party.Throughout, non-European masculinities and homosociality continued to provide both a foil and a challenge.In addressing these together, this article ultimately advances the wider historiography on imperial exploration by highlighting both dependency on indigenous labour and the various ways that 'extreme' environments came to be seen and maintained as exceptional spaces for homosocial bonding and narrating exemplary manliness.

The Altitude 'Record' and the Rise of Himalayan Mountaineering
The history of claiming the 'world altitude record' arguably begins with Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.In 1802, during his famous ascent on the volcano Chimborazo in the Andes, he declared he had gone higher than anyone ever had before (though Humboldt did not know of it, archaeological evidence now proves that Inca had actually been higher centuries earlier).At the time, Chimborazo was also believed to be the highest mountain in the world, with the Himalaya only finally accepted as loftier around 1820, and Everest confirmed as the pinnacle in the 1850s. 16Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, those who climbed in the Himalaya were not mountaineers in any modern or sporting sense.Instead, they were mostly East India Company employees or scientific travellers tasked with mapping an increasingly important frontier of British India. 17These men often climbed to high points or passes in the conduct of surveys, but rarely to summits, and there were considerable doubts that the tops of the highest mountains would ever be reached.In this context, the manly self-fashioning around climbing was expressed especially in terms of heroic duty to empire and scientific knowledge production in the face of 'extreme' environments and limited resources.
This perhaps reflects a limited perceived value of claiming the 'altitude record' as a masculine and sporting achievement, but also in practical terms the substantial and ongoing difficulty of measuring altitude accurately enough to verify new claimed heights.In a more philosophical sense, it also required the completion of an imaginative shift that led to the standardisation of altitude above sea level as a category that makes certain mountains more important than others.Debates around pioneering altitude records and when 'mountaineering' in the modern sense truly began in the Himalaya nevertheless grew in tandem with increasingly serious climbing endeavours around the turn of the twentieth century. 18Alpine Journal editor Douglas Freshfield for example made sure to differentiate the new and often RGS sponsored expeditions from other earlier activities: 'Anglo-Indian officials and officers' he wrote, 'might go on climbing tours … in what they quaintly call "the Hills."' 19But 'the "mountaineering" practised by surveyors in the Himalaya, however spirited of its kind, has not, as a rule, been mountaineering at all in our European sense of the word' and 'there have been many explorers but few mountain climbers'. 20Of course, in insisting on these definitions, Freshfield might be seen as carving out a space for the muscular and sporting efforts that were now forthcoming.
In particular, the climbs of Englishman William Woodman Graham in the 1880s are often pointed to -by both contemporary and modern commentators -as the first true mountaineering exploits in the Himalaya.As Graham claimed in a talk at the Royal Geographical Society, 'I must confess that I received the invitation to read a paper … with considerable apprehension' because 'to my shame perhaps, I went to India more for sport and adventures than for the advancement of scientific knowledge'. 21In this lecture, later published, he described several ascents, including an allegedly record-setting climb of Kabru (24,075 feet) in 1883.Many have since been sceptical of Graham's ascent, albeit not because they thought he had necessarily lied about it.Rather, because his understanding of the topography comes across as confused, some believed he may have climbed an entirely different mountain to the one he thought he had. 22This was nevertheless discussed at the time and since in the context of the 'record', and after Graham's paper, the colonial administrator Richard Temple stood up to remind 'the members of the Society that they had now seen face to face the man who had accomplished the highest ascent'. 23Whatever the doubts around Graham's possible record on Kabru, many of the authorities of the day, including the English mountaineer and scientist J. Norman Collie, saw no reason to disbelieve.Others like William Martin Conway remained agnostic, suggesting there was no real way of ever knowing whether Graham had reached the height he thought he had. 24In any event, as the climber Arnold Mumm summarised, it was possible to find earlier discussions of 'the question of "the world's record for altitude" … [but] since 1883, when Graham did or did not get up Kabru, it has excited more or less continuous interest'. 25art of the intrigue of Graham's accent was that he claimed to suffer practically nothing of altitude sickness.As he later wrote in a breezily manly tone 'neither in this nor in any other ascent did we feel any inconvenience in breathing other than the ordinary panting inseparable from any great muscular exertion'.Meanwhile, 'headaches, nausea, bleeding at the nose, temporary loss of sight and hearing, were conspicuous only by their absence'. 26He went on to state that: Unquestionably man's range is increasing.Read any old account of an ascent of Mont Blanc; it was expected that the climber should suffer every possible inconvenience from rarefied air, and the harrowing details were duly forthcoming.Now the ascent is mere child's play, and we hear no more of these agonising horrors. 27is in part reflects greater familiarity with altitude sickness, but also changing tropes around manly weakness and muscular authority.Indeed, the French physiologist Paul Bert suggested that from the late 1860s climbers began downplaying altitude symptoms because they had become 'almost as afraid of being ridiculed for mountain sickness as they were for sea sickness'. 28While 'formerly, they looked for symptoms in themselves, they gladly boasted of having experienced them, as of a mysterious danger braved; today they refuse to observe them, especially to acknowledge them; sometimes they are denied'. 29In other words, recording bodily weakness as essential to claiming authoritative knowledge of unknown environments might now interfere with portrayals of masculine bodily performance.
Whatever its convoluted legacy as a 'record' ascent, a lasting innovation of Graham's climbs was that he brought with him the Swiss guides Joseph Imboden, Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann.This marked the beginning of a trend of importing European experts from the Alps to the Himalaya for the next phase of serious mountaineering.Indeed, Swiss guides would only be superseded by Sherpa in the first half the twentieth century, in part because of a nationalistic desire to tackle Everest with teams that were entirely 'British'. 30As Michael Reidy notes in the context of climbing in the Alps, while 'the relationship between guides and amateurs often blurred common distinctions of class and authority, it actually helped solidify contemporary notions of masculinity'. 31Here the relations between 'amateur' gentlemanly climbers and their 'professional' or working-class guides thus added a further dimension -usually in the form of solidarity -to the adoption of different masculine presentations around strength, endurance and suffering, albeit always within a broader umbrella of Victorian expectations.
While the value of suffering was a frequent topic, nineteenth-century climbers in the Himalaya also sometimes explicitly reflected on the manliness of risk taking.As Graham mused: How often have I had the question asked of me: 'What's the good of mountaineering?It's very dangerous, and when you've done it, where's the benefit?'And then they give an irritating chuckle and think that they have silenced you.And in truth they have; for it is hopeless to argue with such people. 32raham nevertheless went on to provide a rebuttal that centred masculine advancement and sublime pleasures.That 'it stimulates mind and body alike, in a way that no other sport can do, is, I think, undeniable; it teaches endurance and self-reliance, and brings the body into the most admirable condition'. 33In other words, climbing had the ability to teach, on both a personal and wider imperial level, the expected masculine traits of self-sufficiency, physical prowess and bravery.Exposure to danger nevertheless had a complex relationship with the perceived masculinity of climbing.There was value in demonstrating courage, but in excess this could lead to questions of risk and motivation, something that echoed concerns with the growing scale of loss of life in the Alps.Meanwhile, climbing in pursuit of Graham's 'record' in the 1890s, the English writer and mountaineer Albert Mummery reflected: I am of course aware that it is an age which cares little for the more manly virtues, and which looks askance at any form of sport that can, by any stretch of extremest imagination, be regarded as dangerous: yet … something may surely be urged in favour of a sport that teaches, as no other teaches, endurance and mutual trust, and forces men occasionally to look death in its grimmest aspect frankly and squarely in the face. 34 is perhaps ironic that Mummery's rumination on danger came in the final chapter of a book which was republished posthumously following his death attempting the world altitude record on Nanga Parbat in 1895.William Martin Conway implied that this fate was not unexpected among his friends and 'though taking reasonable precautions, he [Mummery] loved danger for its own sake, and would willingly accept a margin of unavoidable risk'. 35hus on Nanga Parbat: 'the finest climber of his or any preceding generation thus gave up his life on one of the most magnificent mountains in the world.It was the death of all others he would have chosen'. 36Highly romanticised, this is an early example of the valorisation of 'heroic' men meeting their death in the mountains, a trope with a controversial legacy that still echoes in the present.
Mummery and his fatal attempt on the altitude record also provides an additional window into the complexities of masculine presentation in this period.This is because Mummery was acknowledged to lack the physical characteristics of manliness and bodily 'perfection' that would later come to seen as ideal, as especially embodied by George Mallory.As Conway described his friend: [Mummery] knew mountains as some men know horses.He seemed born to climb them, though physically he had not the aspect of an athlete.His body was light and slender.He suffered from some weakness of the spine, which disabled him from weight-carrying but did not otherwise impede him. 37 course, in the earlier period, as Michael Robinson notes, 'the assumption that manliness existed as an inner quality rather than as an expression of physical skill or strength' was widespread.While they were often cast as icons for imperial virility, the climbers of the nineteenth century were thus not yet always required to possess the idealised body types or physical characteristics expected of the men valorised in later British attempts on Everest. 38

Conway, Longstaff and Turn of the Century Imperial Masculinity
After Graham, the next major flirtation with the altitude record came during an expedition led by English climber, literary critic and politician William Martin Conway in 1892.This venture married an uneasy mix of imperial and sporting aims, and here Peter Hansen has shown how, often 'narratives of mountaineering as geographical exploration came into conflict with official discourses that represented the Himalayas as political or military frontiers'. 39Here Charles Granville Bruce, one of the members of the expedition, claimed that Conway 'never made any pretension of conducting a purely mountaineering expedition: he had far wider aims, for in those days the Karakoram were but little known'. 40owever, Bruce confessed that it 'was also doubtless Conway's aim to get in any climbs that he could manage on the way, and we hoped also to make an attempt on the altitude record, if such a thing was possible'. 41This admission was backed up by the fact that, like Graham a decade earlier, Conway included in the expedition party an expert mountain guide; namely, Matthias Zurbriggen, who would go on to become one of the most prolific Swiss guides in this period, and a key participant in mountaineering expeditions around the world.Indeed, the Conway expedition neatly illustrates the ongoing tension between climbing for sport and masculine edification, and the necessity of wrapping mountaineering in the trappings of science and surveying on the edges of empire (Figure 1).
Despite its muddied official and private aims, the Conway expedition did go on to summit the 'Pioneer Peak' in 1892, held up by some as a record climb at 22,600 feet. 42This was based on shaky readings that were later downgraded, and also required the assumption that Graham had not actually ascended Kabru.Even at the end of the nineteenth century, altitude record claims thus continued to be fraught by the difficulties of scientific measurement.Such occasions, however complicated by imperial realities and doubts around measuring mountains accurately, nevertheless presented ample opportunities for masculine self-fashioning.Here Charles Bruce suggested that in reaching this altitude 'the English term "stamina" does not half as well describe the most important quality required for high mountaineering as the French word resistance -résistance not only to hard work, but to cold nights and high elevations and little food'. 43Bruce himself emphasised this when he developed an abscess in his knee, stoically accepted he would not be able to participate in what turned out to be a potentially record ascent, and instead recounted how he successfully operated using only a glass of whiskey and a sharp knife. 44Here self-reliance and self-discipline -even or especially when things went wrong -was central to the construction of Victorian imperial masculinities, and mountaineering gave frequent opportunities to fashion such exemplar moments.
In the list of potentially record climbs, the next significant addition after Conway comes from the English doctor and mountaineer Tom Longstaff, the Swiss Brocherel brothers, and the prolific Gurkha guide Karbir Burathoki in June 1907.Unlike Conway's hedged justifications for his journey, this expedition was an explicitly mountaineering venture, undertaken with preparations for a possible future attempt on Everest in mind.In reaching the record altitude of 23,360 feet on the summit of Trisul, Longstaff described the ascent in a manner that undercuts his own masculinity: My breathing was very rapid, and I felt very feeble, but I was securely tied on to the rope and could not escape … Henri [Brocherel] offered to pull on my rope as much as I liked, so I pocketed my pride and consented to this breach of the rules. 45Longstaff, having recovered some energy in sight of the summit, went on to describe the physical and mental exertion involved: 'I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that it was only by the exercise of considerable mental resolution that I had been able to turn myself into a sufficiently mechanical machine to keep up the pace.' 46 Probably the uneven effects of altitude sickness played a role in this debility, but Longstaff forgoes this excuse.Ultimately his account is not especially flattering to his manliness, and on this occasion the team leader was happy to admit being outperformed by both working class European and South Asian men.Indeed, as he later frankly wrote: 'I knew I was the weakest of the party.' 47 Of course, there was also value in narratives of overcoming 'weakness' through great mental fortitude, and Longstaff's 'confession' in light of his persevering to reach the summit could be interpreted as a self-serving presentation of a different kind.
Similarly, downplaying one's own prowess could also be read here as Victorian false modesty, even as it points to the ambiguous role of suffering and its potential value in claiming authority by experience of extreme environments.More widely, it reflects the question of whether ostentatious and unnecessary suffering was manly or not.Here Ed Armston-Sheret has shown that 'bodies played a central role in explorers' public and scientific reputations' even if 'there was no consensus on how an explorer should use their body, or on how much (or what kind of) suffering they should endure'. 48It is worth remembering that these experiences were curated in accounts for particular audiences, not necessarily fellow climbers.They come to us especially through talks at the Royal Geographical Society, usually later published in journals, or mountaineering travel narratives aimed at wider audiences in Britain in which self-fashioning reflected a need to delineate and reinforce expected hierarchies.As the contrasting narratives of Graham and Longstaff indicate, a willingness to admit bodily weakness in accounts of ascending to record heights nevertheless could and did vary considerably over time, reflecting the malleability of the mountains as spaces for fashioning manly suffering, heroic achievement, and authoritative interaction with extreme environments.
There could also be contrasts between masculine expectations among members of the same expedition.As Longstaff explained of Arnold Mumm, a member of his party who had remained at basecamp during the Trisul ascent: '[he] was at this time nearly fifty years of age.He was a fine mountaineer, compact and stocky, but had not the toughness which usually goes with this build'. 49Longstaff continued that ' [Mumm] was very modest and retiring.With an exceptional record of scholarship both at Eton and Cambridge he was one of the most cultivated men I have ever met … but he was perhaps over refined for the rough work of Himalayan exploration' and 'he slept badly and curious and irregular meals were a trial to him.Nor had he got my irritating capacity for enjoying comfort attained in the most unlikely circumstances'. 50In contrast, meanwhile 'Charlie Bruce was the antithesis of all this.Normally riotous and hilarious he was a devastating practical joker' and 'physically a giant he was a noted wrestler amongst the Sikh masters of the art.Any meal at any time was welcome: but it was bloody chops he craved'.Naturally, he was also 'as brave as a lion' and 'a master of mountain warfare'. 51In this case, Mumm and Bruce are held up as contrasting archetypes, with Mumm acting as foil for Bruce who is represented here less as an individual, and more as a collection of tropes aimed at defining the manly imperial frontiersman and climber.
Mumm nevertheless made key contributions to the expedition in publicising Longstaff's record, and his role in delineating upper-middle class tropes of manliness thus came with a pen not an ice axe.As Mumm noted of the Trisul ascent: 'it is impossible here to keep away from the subject of records' and as Longstaff detests them, so I feel bound to say here -what he has firmly declined to say himself -that the summit of Trisul was then the highest point on the earth's surface which had been reached by man beyond all doubt or controversy. 52 Mumm continued, 'Longstaff lays no claim to any record, and goes out of his way, like a good sportsman, to establish the record of a predecessor [Graham]'. 53More widely, the manly propriety of chasing 'records' was itself the subject of scrutiny.As Douglas Freshfield noted after a paper Longstaff gave at the Royal Geographical Society in 1908: I was born before records were invented, and if an old mountaineer may give advice to his younger friends, I would strongly recommend them to follow Dr. Longstaff's example -not to insist too much on records, to think more of getting to the tops of their peaks, and less of getting higher than their rivals. 54 went on insist that records in mountaineering brought only 'a very transitory joy.The spirit of the Alpine Club has never been, if I may say so, one of self-advertisement or of jealousy', nor the pursuit of financial or reputational reward, but rather for the enjoyment of climbing, 'and I would add, for the memory of it in after-years'. 55Of course, in the context of bombastic self-promotion by explorers and a growing context of individual, imperial and national rivalry, this comes across as somewhat naïve if not disingenuous.It nevertheless reflects the expected false modesty of the upper-middle class British men who tried -and largely succeeded -in monopolising these record climbs at the turn of the twentieth century, and who later had opportunities to regale the RGS.As with imperial masculinities more widely, the self-fashioning of manly endeavours around record climbs ultimately took place as much in drawing rooms in London as it did on the snowy sides of mountains.

European Masculinity and the Masculinity of 'Others'
However varied within parties and over time, the masculinities and vulnerabilities fashioned around mountaineering in the Himalaya all differed from the Alps, and the lecture hall of the RGS for that matter, in at least one major respect: the omnipresence of South Asian men.In the Himalaya, European masculinity was almost never performed without having to be compared to the masculinity of 'others'. 56As Peter Hansen notes, these transcultural exchanges could on occasion produce 'a sense of egalitarian harmony and bonding that takes place between individuals who escape the social hierarchies of everyday life'. 57Describing the end of the expedition that included his possible ascent of Kabru, William Woodman Graham thanked his local shikari or guide: He proved a true friend in need.I think he felt a real friendship for us, as we certainly did for him, and sorry indeed were we all when the time came to part.It is only in times of adversity like these that the true metal in a man comes out. 58 the high mountains, social and racial hierarchies could thus sometimes break down, though as Hansen continues, 'on other occasions, however, mountaineering reinforced social hierarchies or exposed a range of competing discourses that could not be easily reconciled'. 59Himalayan mountaineering parties were nevertheless made up of groups for whom masculine and homosocial expectations varied.Expeditions almost always included a mix of the following: upper-middle class or aristocratic European leaders and officers; professional or working-class European guides, especially Swiss; allegedly 'superior' locals guides, initially Gurkhas, later Sherpas; and finally, the innumerable 'coolies' who usually remained faceless and unnamed in account, lacking idiosyncrasy and often depicted as craven and lazy.
To parse some of these alleged distinctions, it is worth briefly looking at two South Asian men who were elevated to the status of manly companions; namely, the Gurkhas Karbir Burathoki and Harkbir Thapa (see Figure 2).These two men had long mountaineering careers, as Charles Bruce explains: The two Gurkhas who accompanied Conway on his final trip through Ladak were the before-mentioned Harkbir and a younger man, Karbir Burathoki, who showed signs of the greatest promise, but who was not quite old enough to stand the rough life and hard work in the high mountains as well as the other man.Thus began for him and Harkbir a companionship of the mountains which lasted for many years, the younger man finally overtopping Harkbir in his achievements, for fifteen years later the same Karbir Burathoki was with Dr. Longstaff on the first ascent of Trissul. 60e relationship between Harkbir and Karbir is depicted here via tropes of camaraderie and competition, master and apprentice.The pursuit of the altitude record is also framed as central to the lives of the two men and Karbir was a key player in the successful 1907 ascent of Trisul, while Harkbir participated in the earlier ascent of the 'Pioneer Peak' by the Conway party.Although it is never emphasised -and indeed often downplayed -in European imperial accounts, it is worth remembering that the various altitude records discussed in this article were almost always jointly held by both Europeans and South Asians.
Harkbir and Karbir became fixtures of high altitude mountaineering in the Himalaya, and Bruce maintained a long association in particular with Harkbir.In 1899, he arranged to bring him to the Alps, as well as Scotland and Wales.As Bruce explained, 'I had been very keen indeed in my own mind to see how he would shape in the Alps' and 'hoped that after a season … he might greatly improve himself and become a really trustworthy and experienced mountaineer'. 61He went on to conclude that 'we had altogether, I think, one of the most enjoyable times of our life'. 62While the climbs themselves might become spaces of manly comparison, the homosociality and comradeship of mountaineering nevertheless extended well beyond the time when men were bound by the 'brotherhood of the rope'.Indeed, much of mountaineering -then as now -involved sitting around in camp, preparing equipment, resting up for the big push or waiting despondently for a break in the weather.Cramped tents, limited supplies and freezing temperature meant that a rigid segregation between European and non-European members could not be maintained in the same way they might be lower down (see Figure 3).Charles Bruce for example noted that while camping at 18,000 feet in Garhwal in a tiny 'Mummery' type tent: I and one of the Gurkhas, called Kul Bahadur, slept together in one and had a very, very cold and uncomfortable night … in the early morning two miserable figures crept to the door of the tent, simultaneously regarded each other with despair and were both promptly and violently sick for the next ten minutes.A chorus of groans and unpleasantness, but each supporting the other in our mutual misery. 63ese camps might at times have been spaces of friction, but also homosocial bonding through shared suffering.Tom Longstaff similarly noted in the days before the record ascent of Trisul a storm meant 'we could not stay outside the tents, so I passed the day in smoking and dragging out Karbir's reminiscences of war'. 64Longstaff went on to explain that 'he has been in forty affairs, and is great on bullet-wounds.He takes a sensible view of war, and fights to hurt.I fear [Arnold] Mumm had a very dull time alone in his tent'. 65Tentbound by the weather, a European and a South Asian man thus spent a day swapping manly tales of war in a manner that would have been inconceivable at an officers' club in the plains.Whether this is truly an example of social and racial hierarchies breaking down is a however an open question, and our perspective on the homosociality of this experience is only one-sided as Karbir leaves no account.Indeed, the limits of the colonial archives mean that recovering these histories reveals a great deal about what European men thought masculinities and homosociality should look like, but much less about what these relationships actually might have been.
In these homosocial interactions, courage, strength and hardiness were emphasised as important manly characteristics, but just as important was good humour in the face of suffering.Likewise, japes, jokes and pranks -reflective of the English public schoolboy attitudes of most of the authors of these mountaineering narratives -were seen as highly manly, even as they often juvenilised the non-Europeans members of the expeditions.As Conway wrote on one occasion: 'Bruce and his Gurkhas put on their rope.Parbir amused himself by roping Amar Sing in a slip-knot and almost rolled over a precipice in shrieks of laughter.' 66 Arnold Mumm, in describing the relationship between Bruce and the Gurkha guides, meanwhile remarked that: 'casting about for an analogy that would be illuminating to people at home, I have said, more than once, that they were like schoolboys spending a holiday with a very popular master'. 67He continued that 'one or two of them further resembled schoolboys in the possession of a most engaging love of chaff and practical jokes, and no trait could show more decidedly the gulf between them and all other native races' while at the same time 'they were ready, at a moment's notice, to spring to attention, so to speak, and become alert, obedient, prepared to go anywhere and do anything'. 68These anecdotes indicate that whatever the possibilities for cross-cultural friendship, these interactions were never far from lapsing into highly paternalistic versions of homosociality and delineating hierarchies between different South Asian ethnic groups, ultimately reinforcing wider ideas of 'civilisational' difference.
In the early nineteenth century meanwhile, the term 'mountaineer' was already widely used in South Asia, though not to refer to Europeans with vertical aspirations, or indeed to climbers at all, but instead to those who lived in the uplands. 69A degree of work thus had to be done to claim mountaineering as a pursuit worthy of masculine duty and sublime experience, and claim 'mountaineer' as a term that was only available to European men (or occasionally women), with South Asians limited to the lesser roles of 'guides' or 'porters'.Speaking of technical mountaineering, Charles Bruce for example suggested that: There are from one end of the Himalaya to the other splendid mountaineers in the natural and not in the educated modern sense: men of the greatest possible stamina and activity and sure-footedness but men who are filled with a terror of the great summits in different degrees according to the conditions of their life and according to the geographical position of their homes. 70is casts climbing in civilisational and racial terms, further wrapped up in the trappings of environmental determinism.Bruce went on to suggest that climbing to the tops of mountains was not anyway seen as desirable by South Asians, who he alleged could not understand the masculine and intellectual splendour of pursuing higher peaks: There has been little up to date to egg them on, until quite, quite recent years; to struggle for the conquest of peaks which to their minds leads to nothing, is terribly dangerous and may involve them in supernatural disaster into the bargain. 71uglas Freshfield meanwhile noted that once more 'Gurkha soldiers will have been trained -they are magnificent raw material -up to the level of good Alpine porters … the chief obstacle to the conquest of the great peaks of the Himalaya would' be overcome.Like Bruce, he imputed a certain 'natural' manliness to uplanders, but emphasised the need for a European guiding hand.Of course, this might also be read as a tacit admission of dependence, and Freshfield went on to acknowledge that 'it is difficult to see how any first class Himalayan summit is to be reached without such aid'. 72n terms of wider imperial entanglements, developing climbing guides overlapped with the need to train mountain soldiers in the Age of Empire.Indeed, military considerations and sporting ambitions frequently blurred on high imperial frontiers.Charles Bruce insisted, for example, that 'outside military technique, there is no such training for a soldier as a difficult mountaineering expedition'. 73Indeed, almost all of Bruce's climbing and involvement with attempts on the altitude record was done on leave from his formal employment as officer of a Gurkha regiment (Figure 4).Here Gurkhas were often elevated to a different class of 'native' in terms of their masculine performances.Indeed, on one occasion Tom Longstaff described 'a very fine performance on the part of the Gurkhas, and a striking testimony both to their inherently resolute character' especially if it was remembered 'that they were called upon to perform a feat which was quite beyond the powers of any of the local men'. 74From the possibilities for homosocial companionship to the development of elite guides and soldiers, certain groups of South Asian men were thus often elevated over others.More widely, these reflected colonial ethnographies of so-called 'martial races', among whom the Gurkhas were central (the archetype of the heroic indigenous climbing guide would not be completely transferred to the Sherpas of northeastern Nepal until the 1920s). 75Here 'mountain' or 'hill' races were frequently depicted as more manly, at least in part because this allowed for a negative juxtapositions with lowlanders -especially Bengaliswho were often rendered as 'weak' and 'effeminate'.
If Gurkha guides like Harkbir and Karbir might sometimes transgress hierarchies to become brothers of the rope, other men -namely, the porters and 'coolies' -were meanwhile frequently relegated to the lowest echelons of masculinity, depicted as lazy, fearful and two-faced.Early during the 1892 expedition, William Martin Conway wrote for example that when crossing a minor glacier: 'Zurbriggen carefully watched the coolies to see which were the best.Whenever he noticed a good one he gave him a ticket for the Hispar pass.' 76 As Conway admitted, 'the reception of these tickets was not desired; each and all declared that their hearts beat fast, that they had pains in the chest, and made all manner of malingering excuses'. 77On the one hand, this neatly fits the colonial trope of the 'lazy native', with the porters depicted as deceitfully attempting to avoid hard work.On the other hand of course, this might also be read as a reminder that manly performance and heroics was not uniformly or necessarily a desired showing.

Homosociality, Fears of Domestication and the Exclusion of Women
At the turn of the twentieth century, as climbers increasingly sought out the high peaks of the Himalaya, historians have shown that mountaineering and masculinity entwined around two related fears: concern that the available spaces for adventure were shrinking, and worries about the rise of mass tourism. 78Conway for example, noted that as the last 'blanks' on the maps were filled in, high mountains would have a growing role as spaces for manly experience.He wrote that he had 'been warned that, in addressing the Royal Geographical Society, I should avoid descriptions of mountaineering' but 'I make bold to transgress into the region of prophecy, and to affirm that it is the destiny of this Society to hear much more of mountains in the future than it has heard in the past.' 79 This was because 'few flat areas of any great extent remain to attract the adventurous.The abodes of snow, polar and mountainous, alone stand forth to challenge exploration.It is not the nature of man to decline that challenge'. 80Writing in 1902 meanwhile, J. Norman Collie lamented the apparent overrunning of Europe's mountains: 'as access to the Alps … becomes easier year by year, the mountaineer, should he wish to test his powers against the unclimbed hills, must perforce go further afield'. 81ountaineering mattered for masculinity Collie went on, because this was a space 'where friendships are made which would have been impossible under other circumstances -for on the mountains the difficulties and the dangers shared in common by all are the surest means for showing a man as he really is' and it was moreover 'a sport which renews our youth, banishes all sordid cares, ministers to mind and body diseased, invigorating and restoring the whole'. 82These comments echo wider concerns in the late nineteenth century and fear that manliness and masculinity was in decline, as urban men became 'soft' and 'feminized'. 83Mountaineering in general, and mountaineering on imperial frontiers in particular, was thus often held up as an antidote to these perceived woes.As Paul Gilchrist notes more widely, climbing often represented a '"flight from domesticity" -a deliberate attempt to cut the apron strings and break beyond emasculating mundanity of life in the metropolis'. 84lthough not always spelled out explicitly, key to the potential of mountains for homosocial bonding, camaraderie and manly experience was the absenceand at times active exclusion -of women. 85On the edges of empire, this policing of spaces for masculinity was initially unnecessary, as the surveying occupations that took East India Company employees and officers into the high mountains already did the work of exclusion for them.Later, the growing presence of women in the outdoor spaces of the Himalaya seemed to herald encroaching civilisation and echo a 'fate' that had seemingly already befallen the Alps.A frequent trope in accounts of Himalayan climbing was using a return to spaces occupied by women to signal the conclusion of a mountaineering expedition.For example, William Martin Conway described how on his descent in 1892 he came across a large encampment and 'on inquiry I found that the inhabitants of the tents were five Mem Sahibs, unapproachable therefore … "Clearly," I said to myself … "we have come down into the regions of civilisation" … and I made peace with the world'. 86In other words, the tripand the time for manly experiences against and in nature -was over.
At the same time, these climbers sometimes travelled in the high mountains with mixed parties of men and women.Charles Bruce, an almost ubiquitous participant in the altitude record expeditions around turn of the twentieth century, noted for example on an 1895 trip that 'my wife accompanied me'.However, he went on to differentiate this as domesticated travel rather than masculine struggle, writing that 'we made a most* comfortable camp in the Shikara Valley and had a very active but non-ambitious existence, in perfect climate and scenery'. 87In the footnote he suggested '*On this point my wife and I hold different opinions.' 88Finetta Bruce meanwhile wrote a description of her travels titled 'Camp life from a Lady's point of view'.This served to reinforce stereotyped gender roles, and she claimed that: 'very few women have either the inclination or the physical strength to become earnest mountaineers … record-breaking does not necessarily spell enjoyment, on the contrary', but even trips travelling with the 'main camp while the expert mountaineer took short cuts to the top of peaks or over them, have been full of pleasures, to say nothing of the long spells together'. 89This last is perhaps a tacit acknowledge that Charles Bruce spent as much or more time in the homosocial company of Harkbir, Karbir and his Gurkhas than with her.
Ironically, even as those seeking manly adventures were looking higher and higher, in the early twentieth century women like the American Fanny Bullock Workman were already climbing very high as well (see Figure 5). 90Workman, usually travelling with her husband William and often also the Swiss climbing guide Matthias Zurbriggen, made a series of climbs in the Himalaya between 1899 and 1912.As well as inverting the masculine stranglehold on the high peaks, Workman's exploits disrupted what had become a predominately British monopoly on Himalayan climbing.She made a number of ascents, but one stood above the others.In 1906, at 47 years of age, she reached the top of the so-called Pinnacle Peak (a secondary summit of Nun Kun), which at 22,740 feet was a new high point for women, surpassing her own previous records, and in fact very nearly the outright altitude record. 91s in the cases of Conway and Graham, there is some confusion over the measurements, and Workman thought the height of the Pinnacle Peak was actually 23,263 feet. 92Either way, this was definitively the 'women's altitude record', and one which Workman vigorously defended, including against a fellow American woman, Annie Smith Peck, who in 1908 claimed she had gone higher than Workman on Huascarán in Peru (to nearly 24,000 feet).In response, Workman hired a team of surveyors in South America -at not inconsiderable expense -to show that the claimed height of Huascarán was incorrect.In a letter to the editor of the Scientific American written in 1910, after laying out the problems with the measurements, Workman concluded that: Miss Peck's highest ascent to date therefore stands, north peak Huascaran 21,812 feet instead of 24,000 feet, as she estimated it; and she has not the 'honor of breaking the world's record,' either for men or women, for my two highest ascents of respectively 22,568 and 23,300 feet debar her from that honor in the case of women, while a number of men have made ascents exceeding her highest. 93Despite various attempts to preserve the highest mountains for manly adventure or imperial homosociality, Fanny Bullock Workman and Annie Smith Peck thus made it abundantly clear that women were just as interested in taking part in the pursuit of altitude.This slightly bombastic story is also a reminder that while challenges with accurate measurement continued, open competition over the altitude record was increasing, with both Workman and Peck keenly mobilising the press in support of their causes.
Workman (both with and without her husband) wrote numerous books and articles publicising her travels and climbs, and gave lectures across Europe, including becoming only the second woman ever to formally address the Royal Geographical Society, in 1905.She was nevertheless absent -giving a Continental lecture tour -during a later address to the RGS which discussed the ascent of Pinnacle Peak in December 1907.After this lecture, the RGS President George Taubman Goldie noted: 'I shall not enter into the difficult question as to what traveller has ascended the greatest height above sea-level' though 'we have Dr. Longstaff here, and I believe there is only a matter of about 10 feet between them, him and Dr. and Mrs. Workman' (here he was talking in terms of the overall record, and referring to the initial and not yet corrected measurements that suggested all had been above 23,000 feet).Reflecting the ongoing tension between science and sport, he went on to insist that 'these explorers are not merely trying how high they can climb' but making appropriate observations so that 'their ascents have real scientific value' to empire. 94The surveyor and geographer Thomas Holditch was also present at the talk, and noted with admiration just how close to the absolute record Fanny Bullock Workman had gotten: You must know, for it has been frequently discussed in this hall, the difficulty that exists in determining altitudes at such great heights … and I think that, even if it is impossible to say, amongst some four or five people who have ascended higher than any people in the world, which individual amongst them has actually achieved the proud position of getting highest, still we must agree that amongst those few Mrs. Bullock Workman certainly takes a prominent place. 95lditch thus chooses to emphasise the ever-present difficulties of reliable measurement, but this is also a forceful reminder that any conversation about the world altitude record must include the name Fanny Bullock Workman.If these men had wanted to reserve the Himalaya as a space for homosocial bonding and narrating manly and imperial ideals, they would certainly not have it all their own way.

Conclusion
By the second decade of the twentieth century, imperial attention had definitively turned to Everest and to pushing the altitude record to its logical conclusion -and ultimately redundancy -by reaching the highest point on Earth above sea level.Charles Bruce and Tom Longstaff were both involved in plans for Everest as early as 1906.Bruce went on to lead the 1922 and 1924 British attempts, though by then he was in his 50s, and acted in a managerial rather than climbing capacity.In describing this shifting focus, Douglas Freshfield remarked that 'we have practically, in my lifetime, elevated the manlevel from 18,000 or 19,000 feet up to 25,000' feet but: The next problem to be attacked, the ascent of the highest mountains the world, will be a more satisfactory one for those who attack it, because adventurers who first shake hands on the top of one of the highest Himalayan peaks will have no doubt of their victory. 96 Freshfield points out, tackling Everest and the highest summits by default erased some of the problems with measuring and claiming the altitude record.Indeed, attention turned increasingly to major peaks whose elevations were well established -rather than secondary summits like those of Longstaff and Workman, or obscure bumps which were unnamed before being attached to a perhaps dubious altitude record claims, as in the case of Conway's Pioneer Peak.
This article has shown that the sometimes ambivalent attachment to the altitude record as a marker of manly achievement arose in part due to the ongoing difficulties in claiming a geographical -and increasingly also sporting -feat that required precision scientific instruments to be legible.As Arnold Mumm commented after laying out the challenges of measurement: Bearing these facts in mind, and also the small margins of difference between several of the heights above mentioned, it will be apparent that any one who starts to form a decided opinion as to what persons now are, and have in the past been, entitled to the honour of having reached the highest elevations … has a very pretty tangle to unravel. 97 these various and vexed pursuits of the altitude record, different claims about geography, sport, empire and science might thus all collide.More widely, these convoluted claims and downgradings also point to the ambiguous place of 'records' in both the history of exploration and the evolving discipline of geography.At the same time, these doubts and the malleability of mountain spaces had value, opening up possibilities for different forms of masculine self-fashioning, and for curating expectations around manly experiences against and in nature.
Focusing on the period before Everest, this article has shown that the development of the Himalaya as spaces for the cultivation of masculine ideals and imperial expansion were mutually reinforcing, even as sporting, scientific and imperial ambitions were often difficult to reconcile.Empire provided a canvas for narrating homosociality and manly virtues, and was in turn supported by these stories, of which the Himalaya became an exemplary locale.By examining discussions of mountaineering, especially those facilitated by the Royal Geographical Society, I have nevertheless shown that forms and expressions of homosocial experience in the outdoor spaces of the Himalaya changed in the later nineteenth century, as the mountains offered varied opportunities for crafting imperial and manly identities.It was similarly the case that these masculinities were never entirely static or stable, and the value of and tropes around depictions of suffering and bodily weakness could and did vary considerably over time.Notably, these imperial mountaineers did not yet necessarily have to match the idealised physical 'perfection' of later climbers like Mallory.In the Himalaya, the omnipresence of both working class and non-European guides always also provided a foil and challenge to self-fashioning around bodily performances.Indeed, these show how masculinities were developed not only in opposition to women and femininity, but also in relation a diverse array of other men, making colonial settings like the Himalaya important sites for the study of gender more generally.Here the stories of Harkbir and Karbir, and the possibilities for homosocial -if deeply patriarchal -friendships ultimately also highlight imperial mountaineers' dependency on cross-cultural and indigenous labour and expertise.Together, these demonstrate that attending to the narration and maintenance of imperial masculinities is essential to more encompassing global histories of exploration and sport in the Himalaya, and indeed to understanding imperial practices on the edges of empires more widely.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.'On top of the Pioneer Peak' (Conway, Climbing and Exploration, 523).While potentially depicting the 'world altitude record', this image is nevertheless designed to evoke the surveying and imperial contributions of the expedition, with the plane table front and centre.Conway never placed great confidence in his instruments or readings which suggested that this might have been a record-setting climb.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. 'Uchubagan Camp' (Conway, Climbing and Exploration, 163).Unlike the large entourages usual in imperial travel lower down, the cramped tents used on high-altitude expeditions meant that men of different race and class lived in close proximity.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. 'Climbing party of Goorkhas, with F. G. Lucas and C. G. Bruce' (Bruce, Twenty Years,90).The altitude record expeditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depended heavily on Gurkha labour and expertise, with Gurkhas frequently depicted as more 'manly' than other South Asians, especially lowlanders.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Fanny Bullock Workman on the Silver Throne plateau in 1912, holding up a pamphlet with the headline 'Votes for Women' (Workman and Workman, Two Summers, 128).