Brobdingnag is a fictional land that is occupied by

giant In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''wiktionary:gigas, gigas'', cognate wiktionary:giga-, giga-) are beings of humanoid appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''gia ...

s, in

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...

's 1726 satirical novel ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

.'' The story's main character,

Lemuel Gulliver Lemuel Gulliver () is the fictional protagonist and narrator of ''Gulliver's Travels'', a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726. In ''Gulliver's Travels'' According to Swift's novel, Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire c. ...

, visits the land after the ship on which he is travelling is blown off course. As a result, he becomes separated from a party exploring the unknown land. In the second preface to the book, in 1727, Gulliver laments that the publisher misspelled the land's name, which Gulliver asserts is actually called Brobdingrag. The adjective ''Brobdingnagian'' has come to describe anything of colossal size.

Location

Brobdingnag is placed by Swift into the real world, he describes its location and geography in Part II of ''Gullivers Travels'' and provides a map showing where it is. However, the accounts are somewhat contradictory. The map printed at the beginning of Part II indicates that Brobdingnag is located on the northwest coast of North America, in probably what is now

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. The map shows (from south to north) Point Monterey, Port Sir Francis Drake,

Cape Mendocino Cape Mendocino ( Spanish: ''Cabo Mendocino'', meaning "Cape of Mendoza"), which is located approximately north of San Francisco, is located on the Lost Coast entirely within Humboldt County, California, United States. At 124° 24' 34" W longit ...

, Cape St. Sebastian, Cape Blanco and the semi-mythical Strait of Anián, all locations on the Pacific coast of North America, and depicts Brobdingnag as a peninsula extending west into the Pacific to the north of the Straits. In the book, Gulliver describes his voyage from England. After wintering at the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

, the ship reached a latitude of five degrees south, northward of

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

in March 1703, and the

Moluccas The Maluku Islands ( ; , ) or the Moluccas ( ; ) are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located in West Melanesi ...

, "about three degrees northwards of the line" in April. From there, a storm drives the ship "about five hundred leagues to the east" (this would place the ship still in

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Poly ...

), after which the crew determine to "hold on the same course rather than turn more northerly, which might have brought us to the north-west parts of Great

Tartary Tartary (Latin: ''Tartaria''; ; ; ) or Tatary () was a blanket term used in Western European literature and cartography for a vast part of Asia bounded by the Caspian Sea, the Ural Mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the northern borders of China, ...

". They sighted land, which Gulliver later discovers is Brobdingnag, on 16 June 1703. Brobdingnag is claimed to be a continent-sized

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

long and miles wide, which based on the location given by Gulliver would suggest that it covers most of the

North Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

. Contrariwise, his map shows Brobdingnag to be of a similar size and extent as the present-day

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

, and his description of the voyage puts it at a six-week voyage from the

. Swift was highly sceptical about the reliability of

travel writing The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. History Early examples of travel literature include the '' Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' (generally considered a ...

s, and the unlikely geographic descriptions parody many unreliable travel books published at the time which Percy Adams describes as "travel lies".

Scale

Gulliver states that a nine-year-old girl named Glumdalclitch, who teaches him the language, stands "not above 40 feet tall, being small for her age". In at least two cases, he states explicitly that a Brobdingnagian's eyes are "above sixty feet" from the ground, giving a ratio of at least eleven to one. He also states that he would "appear as inconsiderable to this nation as a Lilliputian would be among us", indicating the same twelve to one ratio given for Lilliput was intended. This is further reinforced by hailstone being almost 1,800 times as heavy as in Europe (with 1/12 ratio, it should be 1,728). The queen's

court dwarf Several dwarfism, dwarfs over the course of history were employed as court dwarfs. They were History of slavery, owned and traded amongst Courtier, people of the court, and delivered as gifts to fellow kings and queens. Visual effect Court dwarfs ...

, the shortest native on record, is not quite thirty feet tall, which, on a 1/12 scale, would make him equivalent to a person a bit below thirty inches, the height of the Chinese dwarf He Pingping. Gulliver also describes visiting the chief temple in Lorbrulgrud, whose tower was the highest in the kingdom, but reports he "came back disappointed, for the height is not above three thousand foot", which "allowing for the difference in size between those people and us in Europe" is "not equal in proportion to Salisbury steeple". Outside world whales are stated to be of a size that one man can barely carry, and are eaten by common folk if they find a beached specimen.

Geography

Brobdingnag is said to be located between

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

and

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, extending six thousand miles in length, and between three and five thousand miles in breadth. It is described as a peninsula, terminated to the northeast by a range of

volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most oft ...

es up to high separating the country from unknown land beyond. It is surrounded on three other sides by the ocean, and the people have never been able to develop ocean-going ships. The land "has 51 cities, near 100 walled towns, and a great number of villages". Lorbrulgrud is claimed to be the capital with the king having a seaside palace at Flanflasnic. The capital "contains above 80,000 houses" and "is in length three ''glonglungs'' (about fifty four English miles) and two and a half in breadth". Gulliver tells us that Lorbrulgrud was "situated near the middle of that empire" and was three thousand miles distant from the farmer's house on the coast, that the journey took ten weeks and that they "crossed five or six rivers many degrees broader and deeper than the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

or the

Ganges The Ganges ( ; in India: Ganga, ; in Bangladesh: Padma, ). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary rive ...

", and "there was hardly a rivulet smaller than the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...

London Bridge The name "London Bridge" refers to several historic crossings that have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark in central London since Roman Britain, Roman times. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 197 ...

People, flora and fauna

The people of Brobdingnag are described as

s who are as tall as 60 feet high and whose stride is ten yards. All of the other animals and plants, and even natural features such as rivers and even

hail Hail is a form of solid Precipitation (meteorology), precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailsto ...

, are in proportion. The rats are the size of

mastiff A mastiff is a large and powerful Dog type, type of dog. Mastiffs are among the largest dogs, and typically have a short Coat (dog), coat, a long low-set tail and large feet; the skull is large and bulky, the muzzle broad and short (brachycephal ...

s, with tails "two yards long, wanting an inch", while mastiffs are "equal in bulk to four

elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant ('' Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian elephant ('' Elephas maximus ...

s". Gulliver describes flies "as big as a

Dunstable Dunstable ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, east of the Chiltern Hills, north of London. There are several steep chalk escarpments, most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the north. Dunstable is the fou ...

lark Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occ ...

", and

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...

s the size of

partridge A partridge is a medium-sized Galliformes, galliform bird in any of several genera, with a wide Indigenous (ecology), native distribution throughout parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Several species have been introduced to the Americas. They ar ...

s, with stings "an inch and a half long, and sharp as needles". This also means that the country is far more dangerous for people of normal human size, as evidenced by Gulliver using his hanger far more often here—namely, on attacking vermin—than in any other of the strange countries he visited, but the people are civilised. A ''splacknuck'' is an animal about long, to which Gulliver is compared in size, although it is never explained which animal it corresponds to.

Fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

records are claimed to show that the ancestors of the Brobdingnagians were once even larger, likely as an allusion to the medieval tendency of supporting similar claims with bones that had, around Swift's time, started being identified as belonging to elephants,

mastodon A mastodon, from Ancient Greek μαστός (''mastós''), meaning "breast", and ὀδούς (''odoús'') "tooth", is a member of the genus ''Mammut'' (German for 'mammoth'), which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to ...

s and even

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...

s. The King of Brobdingnag argues that the race has deteriorated. The language of Brobdingnag is depicted as being of a character distinctively different from that of Lilliput.

History and government

Gulliver relates that, in the past, there were battles between the monarchy, nobility, and people resulting in a number of civil wars ending in a treaty. The monarchy is based on reason. City officials are elected by ballot. The King of Brobdingnag finds English institutions and behaviour wanting in comparison with ''his'' country's. Based on Gulliver's descriptions of their behaviour, the King describes the English as "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth". Swift intended the moral relationship between the English and Brobdingnagians to be as disproportionate as the physical relationship. The King of Brobdingnag is considered to be based on Sir William Steele, a statesman and writer, whom Swift worked for early in his career. Some critics believed it to be based on Sir William Temple. The army of Brobdingnag is claimed to be large with 207,000 troops including 32,000 cavalry although the society has no known enemies. The local nobility commands the forces;

firearm A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and operated by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see legal definitions). The first firearms originate ...

s and

gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal (which is mostly carbon), and potassium nitrate, potassium ni ...

are unknown to them. The King scolds Gulliver when he tries to interest the statesman in the use of gunpowder. The laws of Brobdingnag are simple and easy to follow. There is little

civil litigation Civil law is a major "branch of the law", in common law legal systems such as those in England and Wales and in the United States, where it stands in contrast to criminal law. Glanville Williams. ''Learning the Law''. Eleventh Edition. Stevens. 1 ...

. Murderers are beheaded. In Gulliver's in-character preface to the story, headed ''A letter from Captain Gulliver to his cousin Sympson'', he specifies that the correct spelling is in fact "... ''Brobdingrag'' (for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously ''Brobdingnag''), ... [emphasis added]". This correction by the fictional author is a device used to add an element of

verisimilitude In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be close ...

to the story.

Culture

Brobdingnagian culture consists of history, poetry, mathematics and ethics, mathematics being a particular strength.

Printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

has been long known but

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

are relatively small. The king has the largest library, which contains about one thousand volumes. The Brobdingnagians favour a clear literary style.

Symbolism

The mismatch between body sizes of Brobdingnag giants and Gulliver is the main feature of the plot: as

Dr Johnson Samuel Johnson ( – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary criticism, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicograp ...

stated with some derision in 1775, "once you have thought of big and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest". However, Swift investigates deeper: the mismatch between the world of Brobdingnag and Gulliver's size creates an environment akin to the one experienced by real-life babies, "Every child begins life in Brobdingnag" (cf.

John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 (Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.) – 28 October 1704 (Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.)) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thi ...

's children that "are Travellers newly arrived in a strange Country, of which they know nothing"). Brobdingnagians are nice to Gulliver, trying to teach him, providing with toys, while he yearns for comfort and approval, proudly demonstrating his achievements. The enlarged world diminishes adulthood. Child analogy is reinforced by a contrast between a bad parent (the farmer) and a good one (the King). The scene of being found in Brobdingnag: emergence from the safe confines of the ship into the world of giants - screaming - being picked up and looked upon - reception by the family - is an

allusion Allusion, or alluding, is a figure of speech that makes a reference to someone or something by name (a person, object, location, etc.) without explaining how it relates to the given context, so that the audience must realize the connection in the ...

to birth. In each of the Gulliver journeys, Swift dismisses a particular aspect of high opinion that humanity holds about itself. The travel to Brobdingnag exposes the lack of maturity: Gulliver has to be saved by Brobdingnagians not just from the danger of the oversized world around him, but from his own follies: quarreling with a "dwarf", suggesting the King to use gunpowder on his subjects, seeing his own smallness, but overlooking narrowmindedness. Brobdingnag can be interpreted as an outsider's view of England (the farther he goes away, the closer he comes to the own country, seen from a different perspective), while Gulliver's travel is similar to a life story of an English gentlemen of the time. While traveling to and staying at Brobdingnag, he is always confined (aboard a ship, on a boat in a water tank, in a box); to go anywhere, he needs an adult to carry him. The box might symbolize the restriction of freedom, a prison, or a coffin. In the end, the box becomes a vehicle for freedom (symbolized by sea, possibly, the final freedom granted by death).

Legacy

The land is the subject of

James Gillray James Gillray (13 August 1756Gillray, James and Draper Hill (1966). ''Fashionable contrasts''. Phaidon. p. 8.Baptism register for Fetter Lane (Moravian) confirms birth as 13 August 1756, baptism 17 August 1756 1June 1815) was a British list of c ...

's satirical hand-coloured etching and aquatint print, titled ''The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.–Vide. Swift's Gulliver: Voyage to Brobdingnag''. Produced in 1803, it shows a profile of

George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland, Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and ...

of the United Kingdom, representing the Brobdingnagian king, holding a miniature

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...

, representing Gulliver, while observing him through a spyglass. It was published on 26 June, five weeks after the breakdown of the

Treaty of Amiens The Treaty of Amiens (, ) temporarily ended hostilities between France, the Spanish Empire, and the United Kingdom at the end of the War of the Second Coalition. It marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars; after a short peace it set t ...

, which precipitated the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

. The king's speech balloon in the top half of the print reads "My little friend Grildrig,Grildrig has the name given to Gulliver by the farmer's daughter Glumdalclitch in Brobdingnag you have made a most admirable panegyric upon Yourself and Country, but from what I can gather from your own relation & the answers I have with much pains wringed & extorted from you, I cannot but conclude you to be one of the most pernicious, little-odious-reptiles, that nature ever suffer'd to crawl upon the surface of the Earth". On

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

's largest

moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

, Phobos, the

crater A crater is a landform consisting of a hole or depression (geology), depression on a planetary surface, usually caused either by an object hitting the surface, or by geological activity on the planet. A crater has classically been described ...

Grildrig is named because of Swift's 'prediction' of the two then undiscovered Martian moons, which his

Laputa Laputa is a flying island described in the 1726 book ''Gulliver's Travels'' by Jonathan Swift. It is about 4½ miles (7¼km) in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its inhabitants can manoeuvre in any direction using magnetic levitat ...

n astronomers had discovered.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* "Jonathan Swift." ''Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 2: Writers of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660–1789''. Gale Research, 1992. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale. 2005. * Manguel, Alberto; and Gianni Guadalupi. "Brobdingnag", ''The Dictionary of Imaginary Places'', Harcourt Brace, New York, 2000. *

External links

A voyage to Brobdingnag

{{Fictional countries Fictional elements introduced in 1726 Fictional North American countries Giants in popular culture Gulliver's Travels locations Peninsulas Satire