The legacies of the Enlightenment quest to understand the world led to new modes of colonial knowledge production. It is no coincidence that Joseph Banks – who went on to have a significant scientific career as a botanist—travelled aboard the Endeavour on Captain James Cook’s first scientific voyage (1768-1771), where the east coast of what has since been called Australia was charted. Likewise, Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (1798-1801), marked the beginning of a renewed European colonial interest in the Middle East. He took 167 scholars and scientists as part of his efforts. The production of knowledge created new paradigms for European understandings of the world. The narrative of “discovery” applied as much to territory as it did to knowledge.

This chapter considers the implications of how colonial knowledge production was of value to the states that had commissioned such expeditions, and the implications of such knowledge on the visualisation of “far-off ” places. This matrix of knowledge is highlighted in fields like photography in and of Palestine and what became Australia that often encompassed a confluence of scholarly discourse, state information gathering, and popular imaginaries.