Glossary
BRITISH LIFE
Bank of England
A state-owned institution acting as the central bank of the United Kingdom, which convenes the Monetary Policy Committee responsible for managing the country’s monetary policy. Established in 1694 to act as banker for the English government, the Bank of England was fully nationalized in 1844, when it officially became the final word on English money. Thefts from the Bank form the centerpiece of numerous works of fiction from novels to films.
Reform Club
Phileas Fogg’s club in London, and generally the only place other than home where he is to be found (when not circling the globe, that is). In the mid-19th Century—a period of unprecedented prosperity in England—the gentlemen’s clubs of London were frequented both by established men of the upper class and by an emerging middle class in pursuit of power, wealth, and social status. These private clubs, famously all-male havens, not only served as centers of political and business activities, but also as convivial havens for gambling, reading, socializing, and excellent dining. They were also noted for the passion of their members about betting of any and all kinds, including wagers such as the one that launches Fogg on his voyage.
The Reform Club in particular has a rich and intriguing history. It was founded in 1836 by the Liberal politician Edward “Bear” Ellice (1781-1863) to promote “the social intercourse of the reformers of the United Kingdom,” and to provide a social milieu for the exchange of radical ideas generated by the Reform Bill of 1832. Membership was open to men professing to be liberal, regardless of their political persuasion, and the club attracted members of diverse backgrounds and occupations. Among notable past members were Prime Ministers Gladstone and Churchill, pioneering reformer Joseph Hume, and novelists Henry James and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Savile Row
London’s Savile Row, where Fogg has his home, is a name that conjures up images of elegance, tradition, old world charm, and sophistication: since the first custom tailor moved into Savile Row in 1785, the area has been known world-wide as The Place for men’s hand-made garments.
Scotland Yard
Common nickname or shorthand for the Metropolitan Police force of London, established in 1829 to replace the local watchmen. The name comes from the location of its headquarters, which backed onto Great Scotland Yard. The first organized police force of its kind, the Scotland Yard’s detectives quickly became favorite literary figures—not always in a complimentary way, in a tradition that includes not only Fogg’s somewhat hapless nemesis Fix but also Sherlock Holmes’ sometime rival, Inspector Lestrade.
Whist
A classic card game—based, like Bridge and Hearts, on points—involving four players in fixed partnerships bidding on trumps. Whist has extremely simple rules but enormous scope for scientific play and rewards the mathematical mind, no doubt what makes Fogg such a passionate addict of the game. In 1742, Edmond Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, but it was Henry Jones (pseudonym Cavendish) who first compiled (in 1862) a complete system of scientific whist play. For more, including an explanation of the rules of whist, see www.pagat.com/whist/whist.html.
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TRAVEL
Bradshaw Guide
The first comprehensive guide to the continental railway system. First published in 1839, it soon turned into a monthly published railway timetable. Its comprehensive precision helped make possible, or at least feasible, a journey such as the one undertaken by Fogg and Passepartout.
Great Indian Peninsula Railway
In 1853, the first 20 miles of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway were opened for operation, providing the first stretch of much-needed rail transport for goods. The East Indian Railway opened the following year, and thereafter rails spread steadily over the sub-continent, so that by 1880 there were 9,000 miles of open line. The work of railroad construction was hard and dangerous, and British-designed lines were typically built by Indian laborers, who suffered death, disease, and many setbacks along the way. Fogg and his companions experience first-hand the advantages, and challenges, of this progress.
The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, or the Geographical Journal
A detailed scientific journal published by The Royal Geographical Society, a British learned society, founded in 1830 and granted a Royal charter by Queen Victoria in 1859. Its aim, not surprisingly, was to promote the advancement of science; for Fogg, it seems to have served as a cross between Wikipedia and our National Geographic Magazine (one of its obvious descendants).
Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company
Founded in 1836, the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company sent ships from London to Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean. The company offered service to Alexandria and an overland journey to Port Suez with a connection to India (not P&O until 1840), the overland route being the quickest way to India. In 1845 the P&O extended services to Singapore and the Far East, and in 1852 they started a bi-monthly Singapore-to-Australia service. Southampton-Capetown-Australia routes became available in 1853, and the opening of Suez Canal in 1869 shortened journey times considerably. By the 1890s, the voyage from London to Bombay took 12½ days. Steamers left London every Saturday for India and fortnightly for Australia and China.
Transcontinental Railroad
Spanning the distance from Sacramento, California to Omaha, Nebraska, the transcontinental railroad had been completed in 1869 (just three years before Fogg’s adventure), when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines were joined in Promontory, Idaho. Beyond Omaha, a number of lines were available for reaching the East Coast.
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LOCATIONS WORLDWIDE
Allahabad
City located in north-central India, in Uttar Pradesh. On the site of an ancient Indo-Aryan holy city, Allahabad stands at the junction of two sacred rivers, the Yamuna and the Ganges. The confluence is known as Sangam and is visited by thousands of Hindu pilgrims every 12 years. The city was the scene of much fighting between British and native forces in the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Canton River
The Canton (also called the Pearl or Zhu) River, China’s third longest, links Guangzhou to Hong Kong and flows into the South China Sea between Hong Kong and Macau. The Canton is one of China’s most important waterways.
Godavari
This central-Indian-river, sacred to Hindus, flows nearly 1000 miles eastward, eventually reaching the Bay of Bengal. The development of an irrigation-canal system, linking its delta with that of the Krishna River to the southwest, has made the land around the Godavari one of the richest rice-growing areas of India.
Malabar Hill
The location of the Walkeshwar Temple in Mumbai. It was built in 1127 CE on a site associated in Hindu lore with the god Ram and his brother Lakshman. Destroyed by the Portuguese in 16th century rule and rebuilt in 1715, the temple has since been substantially reconstructed.
Straits of Malacca
Also known as the Malacca Straits, this sea link between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, squeezed between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, offers the shortest sea route between three of the world’s most populous countries—India, China, and Indonesia, cutting nearly a thousand miles off the journey. For centuries, it has been the main thoroughfare (and chief choke-point) for travel between the Middle and Far East. The combination of heavy traffic and narrow shipping lanes has long made the Straits a haven for pirates.
Suez Canal
A 120-mile-long, man-made waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. Its construction, like that of the Panama Canal some decades later, revolutionized transcontinental trade and travel, dramatically shortening sea voyages (and making them far safer). Verne was celebrating a bold new phenomenon when he wrote of travel through the Suez Canal: it had been finished in 1869, only three years before Fogg’s passage.
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GETTING AROUND ASIA
Bazaar
Marketplaces typically found in Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and other Near and Middle Eastern countries. The name evolved from the term baha-char, meaning “the place of prices.” Bazaars have long been central places of exchange, at which people from all walks of life have converge to conduct wholesale and retail trade, gather news and information, and engage in various social, cultural, religious, and political activities.
Brahmins
In Indian religion and society, the caste of priests exclusively charged with religious rites; it is they who know and repeat the Vedas, the most ancient authentic scripture of the Hindus. As teachers and exemplars constituting the highest level of India’s four-caste system, Brahmins were expected to maintain a strict code of conduct and exemplify ideal behavior, showing both kindness and gentleness. Regarded respectfully by all, Brahmins were treated almost like deities by commoners and kings alike. It was considered the gravest of sins to kill a Brahmin.
Minarets
Distinctive architectural features of any mosque (Muslim place of worship), minarets are tall, graceful spires with roofs sporting rod-shaped or concave crowns. They are usually either free-standing or much taller than any surrounding support structure. In some of the oldest mosques, such as the Great Mosque of Damascus, minarets originally served as watchtowers illuminated by torches. Later, minarets came to provide a vantage point from which the muezzin makes his five-times-daily call to prayer for the faithful.
Nizam
A shortened form of Nizam-ul-Mulk, meaning Administrator of the Realm. Beginning in 1719, this was the title of the native sovereigns of Hyderabad state, India, under the Mughal emperors.
Opium (in Hong Kong)
By the time Verne wrote about it, opium (from the seed of the poppy flower) had become a major global commodity—sought after for its sedative properties and especially valued, as laudanum, for the treatment of rampant tuberculosis. The 1858 legalization of opium in China quickly transformed the country into the world’s leading producer—and consumer—of the drug, sending addiction rates soaring. The opium den became a popular trope of fantastical literature, supplanting the gin-soaked dive of the previous century. Passepartout discovers, as Dorothy and friends do in another story, that opiates will put you to sleep.
Rajah
Indicates an Indian or Malay prince or chief, or the bearer of a title of nobility among Hindus.
Suttee
Also known as Sati, this is the self-immolation by a Hindu widow on the funeral pyre of her husband. The Charter Act of 1813 recognized British moral responsibility by introducing just and humane laws in India, foreshadowing future social legislation, and outlawing a number of traditional practices such as sati and thagi (or thuggee: see entry).
Temples
A Hindu temple can be part of an existing building or a free-standing structure. Most temples are dedicated to one primary or presiding deity, along with other subordinate and associated deities; some temples, however, are dedicated to several deities. There are about 400 temples in Bombay. Among the most important are those of Babulnath (dedicated to Shiva) and Mumba Devi (named after the guardian deity from whom Bombay, or Mumbai, takes its name).
“A Violent Sect”
Referring to the Thuggees, usually understood as a criminal cult dedicated to the worship of Kali (Death) and to waylaying, assassinating (by strangulation), and robbing travelers; its members were known as Thugs. Although they were first noted in India as early as the 13th Century, the Thuggee heyday stretched from the 17th Century through their suppression by coordinated British efforts at the end of the 19th Century. There is some dispute over whether Thuggee was a genuine religious practice, or whether its adherents were merely secular criminal bands, akin to land-based pirates or brigands. They were certainly deadly.
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BRITISH IMPERIALISM
British law in India
In the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1856-1857, the British government revived plans to frame a codified law for India. An ambitious period of law-making produced an Evidence Act, Contract Law, Act of Succession, and a revised Code of Criminal Procedure in swift succession. In the face of such accelerated codification, protests against “over-legislation” were widely heard in both India and London. By the mid-1880s, codification had ground to a halt; nonetheless, by this point Indian law was much more codified and systematized than British law was or has since become.
British rule over India
The British Indian Empire (also known as the British Raj or British India) included present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. At various times, it also encompassed Aden (1858-1937), Lower Burma (1858-1937), Upper Burma (1886-1937), British Somaliland (1884-1898), and Singapore (1858-1867). In 1858, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria, who would be proclaimed Empress of India in 1876; this dominion lasted until 1947.
Many factors—including commerce, security, and cultural evangelism—motivated British domination of India. Private and company trade led to the conquest or annexation of territories that produced spices, cotton, and opium. This economic control was aided by Indian collaborators, such as bankers and merchants who controlled intricate credit networks. External threats (such as Russian expansion toward Afghanistan in the 1830s) as well as the desire for internal stability led the British to annex more territory. Meantime, imbued with an ethnocentric sense of superiority, British intellectuals and Christian missionaries spearheaded a movement to bring Western intellectual and technological innovations to Indians. These groups argued that it was Europe’s mission to civilize a “backward” India and hold it as a trust until Indians proved their competence for self-rule.
Calcutta Court of Law
Beginning with the Mayor's Court (established in 1727 for civil litigation), justice in the Indian interior came under the English East India Company’s jurisdiction. In 1772, an elaborate judicial system established civil and criminal jurisdictions, along with a complex set of codes or rules of procedure and evidence. While both Hindu and Muslim jurists were recruited to aid the presiding judges in interpreting customary laws, British common and statutory laws were often followed.
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TECHNOLOGICAL MARVELS
Chronometer
any timepiece, esp. a wristwatch, designed for the highest accuracy.
Telegram wire
First used in 1837 with the five-needled telegraph system (invented by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone), it was soon perfected to transmit electronic messages over long distances, and would be used by Samuel Morse to develop his famed Morse code. The first commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on July 18, 1866, and the telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870—once again, just in time for Fogg to commence his voyage.
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SHIPS
Carnatic
Apparently, there were several ships named Carnatic. The one that sailed a route similar to the one in 80 Days sank in 1869, in the Red Sea. This shipwreck was well known at the time, and it may have been intentional on Verne’s part that Fogg and company narrowly miss boarding the Carnatic. Incidentally, before taking charge of the Carnatic, its captain had helmed the Mongolia, the steamer used by Fogg and Passepartout in crossing the Red Sea.
China
The first screw-propelled steamer built by the Cunard Company expressly for the postal service between London and America. This iron ship was 350 feet long and boasted three decks. 268 first-class and 771 second-class passengers could sleep on the ship, along with the trans-Atlantic mail.
General Grant
The steamer taken by Fogg & Co. seems to have had at least two predecessors of the same name: one had been built in 1863, weighed in at 1200 tons, and burned to its ruin in 1869 (no doubt to the dismay of its captain, ironically named Quick); the other was used for military purposes. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the American Civil War, served as President from 1869 to 1877 (making him president during Fogg’s journey).
Junks
Not, as the name might suggest, useless abandoned old hulks, but rather traditional Chinese flat-bottom boats with a high back end (poop) and battened sails.
Mongolia
Built in 1865 and scrapped in 1888, the steamship Mongolia weighed 2,999 tons. The ship would be rebuilt in the early 1900s.
Rangoon
The Rangoon was a steamship built in 1863 by Samuda Bros, London. It made regular trips from Suez to Calcutta.
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NAUTICAL TERMS AND PHRASES
Bale out
To remove water from a vessel.
Batten down the hatches
Literally, the act of securing the hatches and tarpaulins covering them on a boat with use of battens (long flat blades made of wood) in preparation for a coming storm.
Bear a hand
To assist or help.
Bow
The front-most part of the ship.
Capstan
A capstan is an upright cylinder around which cables are wound for hoisting anchors or raising heavy sails.
“Keep your luff, men!”
To turn the bow of a ship toward the wind.
Knot
A unit of speed equal to one nautical mile, or about 1.15 statute miles per hour.
Midships
The midpoint of the craft, half-way from the forward most point on the waterline to the rear-most point on the waterline.
Pawl
A pawl is a pivoted bar adapted to engage with the teeth of a ratchet wheel or the like to prevent movement or to impart motion. “Pawl” may also be used as a verb, meaning to check or hold with a pawl.
Portside
The left side of the boat when facing the front.
Starboard
The right side of the boat when facing the front.
Steady
An order to hold a vessel on her established course.
Stern
The rear-most part of the ship.
Waterline
An imaginary line circumscribing the hull that matches the surface of the water when the hull is still.
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CURRENCY CONVERSION
Pounds to Dollars
£10 from 1872 is $925.48 in 2008.
£20 from 1872 is $1,850.95 in 2008.
£40 from 1872 is $3,701.90 in 2008.
£100 from 1872 is $9,254.76 in 2008.
£200 from 1872 is $18,509.52 in 2008.
£300 from 1872 is $27,764.28 in 2008.
£1,000 from 1872 is $92,547.61 in 2008.
£2,000 from 1872 is $185,095.23 in 2008.
£4,000 from 1872 is $370,190.46 in 2008.
£5,000 from 1872 is $462,738.07 in 2008.
£20,000 from 1872 is $1,850,952.28 in 2008.
£55,000 from 1872 is $5,090,118.76 in 2008.
Dollars (then) to Dollars (now)
$5,000 from 1872 is worth $87,559.97 in 2008.
$2,000 from 1872 is worth $35,023.99 in 2008.
$60,000 from 1872 is worth $1,050,719.59 in 2008.
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For these and more conversions, there are several online resources, including
http://www.measuringworth.com/exchange, where these were derived.