John Hemming | |
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 Andean explorersHugh Thompson, John Hemming,Vince Lee, and John Beauclerk in 2010 | |
| Born | John Henry Hemming (1935-01-05)5 January 1935 (age 90) Vancouver,British Columbia, Canada |
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John Henry HemmingCMG FSA FRSL FRGS (born January 5, 1935) is a historian, explorer, and expert on theIncas and indigenous peoples of theAmazon basin.[1]
Hemming, was born inVancouver on 5 January 1935. His father, Henry Harold Hemming,[2] served in theFirst World War and was wary of aSecond World War on the horizon. As a result, he sent John's mother, journalist Alice Hemming, to Canada by way of thePanama Canal.[3] John and his sister Louisa were brought back to London when he was two months old. He was educated in the United Kingdom atEton College, in Canada atMcGill University, and earned a doctorate atOxford. He also became an honorary fellow of Magdalen College.
In 1961, with fellow Oxford graduatesRichard Mason andKit Lambert, he was part of theIriri River Expedition into unexplored country in central Brazil. The Brazilian mapping agency,IBGE, sent a three-man survey team to help map these unknown forests and rivers and gave the Expedition permission to name features it found. However, after four months, an unknown indigenous people found the group's trail, laid an ambush, and killed Richard Mason with arrows and clubs. Mason was the last Englishman ever to be killed by a totally unknown anduncontacted tribe. His body was carried out and buried in the British cemetery inRio de Janeiro.[4] The tribe was contacted in 1973, and was calledPanará: Hemming visited them in 1998.[5]
His first book,The Conquest of the Incas, was published in 1970 and is still in print with two revisions. It won the Robert Pitman Literary Prize and theChristopher Award in New York. Hemming had spent the year 1960 travelling to every part of Peru, was for years chairman of the Anglo-Peruvian Society, and has been awarded Peru's two highest civilian honours:El Sol del Peru ('The Sun of Peru', South America's oldest order of chivalry) and the Grand Cross of the Orden al Merito Publico (Order of Merit).[6] He has also written, with the American photographer Edward Ranney, an account ofInca architecture of Peru,Monuments of the Incas, reissued in a revised edition in 2010. Among those whom he inspired and befriended isVince Lee, a fellowAndean explorer and writer.
His experience on theIriri River expedition led to a heightened interest inBrazilian indigenous peoples. On various expeditions he visited 45 tribes throughoutBrazil – four of them (Surui,Parakana,Asurini andGalera Nambikwara) at the time that Brazilian teams made the first-ever face-to-face contact.[7] Over the following 26 years he completed a three-volume history of the indigenous peoples and exploration of theBrazilian Amazonia:Red Gold (1978), which covers the period of 1500–1760;Amazon Frontier (1985), covering the period of 1760–1910; andDie If You Must (2004), which describes their changes during the 20th century. The three volumes add up to over 2,100 pages.
In 1975, John Hemming became director and secretary of theRoyal Geographical Society, a post he held until 1996. He personally led the Maracá Rainforest Project inBrazil (1987–88) which, with 200 scientists and scientific technicians, became the largest research project in Amazonia organised by any European country – in partnership with Brazilian researchers fromINPA (Amazon Research Institute) and[SEMA environment agency. Hemming was awarded theRGS'sFounder's Medal in recognition of his work on the Maracá project, as well as the BrazilianOrdem do Cruzeiro do Sul (Order of the Southern Cross) and medals from theRoyal Scottish Geographical Society and theBoston Museum of Science (Bradford Washburn Medal).
In April 2008 his book,Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon, was published byThames and Hudson. It was described byHugh Thomson in theDaily Telegraph as a book that "will stand as the definitive single-volume work on the subject."[8] Another notable book wasNaturalists in Paradise. Wallace, Bates and Spruce in the Amazon (2015).
In 1979, John Hemming married Susan (Sukie) Babington Smith, daughter ofMichael Babington Smith and granddaughter of SirHenry Babington Smith. She worked for many years in The National Trust, became Director of Development and then Director of Corporate Affairs at the British Museum, and on retirement a trustee of English Heritage. She is the great-granddaughter of9th Earl of Elgin on her father's side and the great-great-granddaughter of the4th Earl of Clanwilliam on her mother's side. They have two children: publisher Beatrice (born 1981) and writerHenry Hemming.[2]
In the1994 New Year Honours, Hemming was appointed aCompanion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) by the British government.[9] He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2013.[10] In August 2018, he was awarded thePresident's Medal of theBritish Academy "for his work in the field of the colonial history and ethnography of Brazil and Peru, and the promotion of the protection of endangered societies".[11]
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| Preceded by | Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society 1990 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President's Medal of the British Academy 2018 With:Zeinab Badawi,Dame Frances Cairncross, William Dalrymple, andAndreas Gestrich | Succeeded by |
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