TCBH Postgraduate Essay Prize Winner for 2009(Right) Wings over Everest: High Adventure, High Technology and High Nationalism on the Roof of the World, 1932–1934.

This article examines the Houston Mount Everest Expedition of 1933, which resulted in the first successful air flights over Mount Everest. Rather than the story of the flights or their technical contributions, it focuses upon their political implications. Central to those implications was the project’s connection to Britain’s extreme right community. Several involved with the expedition were associated with Britain’s high imperialist, often pro-fascist, far right. Their participation in such a cutting edge project acts as one example of the modernist impulse of the far right tendency in the inter-war years. The expedition would provide an opportunity to use modern technology as a metaphor for national regeneration during a period when many saw Britain in steep decline. Some hoped it would make a strong statement to the indigenous people of that region. The flights were conducted in the spring of 1933 during the anxious debate over the future of India. To the far right, the idea of granting Indians even limited autonomy was abhorrent, and many hoped that such a feat of courage and technical prowess would convince Indians of British racial superiority and to abandon their struggles for independence. Others would interpret the meaning of the expedition in different ways, related to the extension of British power. The War Office was delighted with the potential for mapping any area of the earth and facilitating imperial control of contested territories. Still others on the far right were excited about the potential air survey and what air cargo would mean for the economic development of the Empire, linked to the extreme right dream of an autarchic imperial economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]