Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"With negligible exceptions exploration no longer consisted of 'discovery' but of a form of athletic endeavor, often with strong elements of personal or national competition, typified by the attempt to dominate the most severe and inhospitable environments of the Arctic and the Antarctic. Peary of the USA was to win the race to reach the North Pole in 1909 against British and Scandinavian competition; Amundsen of Norway reached the South pole in 1911, one month ahead of the hapless British Captain Scott. (Neither achievement had or was intended to have the slightest practical consequence." [Hobsbawm: Empire, p. 13]