Travellers and their Tales in Early America, 1550-1850
Honours Special Subject, Department of Modern History
MO4907
Dr. Sarah Pearsall
2003-2004
Weekly Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction: Voyages
Week 2: Exotic Tales and Unreliable Narrators: Thinking about Travel Narratives
**Joyce Chaplin. An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the
Lower South, 1730-1815. (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press for IEAHC, 1993), Ch. 3
(“Being Exotic”)
**Bill Bryson. Notes from a Small Island. (London: Black Swan, 1995). Sections on
Edinburgh, Scotland and last lines.
For this week, please write a short (one-page) travel narrative of your own, and bring
enough copies for everyone in the class. This exercise will not be marked, but will help
us to think through issues about the use of travel narratives. Have fun!
Section One: Early Explorers and Observers
Week 2: Chesapeake Voyages: Thomas Hariot and John White
In what ways did early authors characterize the New World, and why?
Online Resource: The Virtual Jamestown Project
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/fhaccounts_date.html
At this site, please access the following (and any others that seem of interest):
**John White, “The True Pictures and Fashions of the People in that Part of America
Now Called Virginia” by John White(?), 1584 & 1588.
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1009b)
**Thomas Hariot, “A brief and true report of the new found land of Virginia,” by
Thomas Hariot, 1588.
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1009)
**John White, Drawings of Picts from “The True Pictures and Fashions of the People in
that Part of America Now Called Virginia” by John White(?), 1584 & 1588.
(in DeBry publication, omitted online) (PACKET)
Week 3: Chesapeake and New England Discoveries
How did experience with Native Americans affect the ways in which Englishmen wrote
about Native Americans?
**John Smith, Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of his Writings, edited by Karen
Ordahl Kupperman, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina press for the Institute
of Early American History and Culture, 1988), Ch. 4. (PACKET)
** Christopher Levett, from George Parker Winship, ed. Sailors’ Narratives of Voyages
along the New England Coast, 1524 –1624 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1905). (PACKET)
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Week 5: New England Settlements
How did views of people and landscapes alter when English presence became more
settled in New England?
**John Josselyn, Second Voyage to New England, from Paul J. Lindholdt, ed. John
Josselyn, Colonial Traveler, (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988), Ch.
3, pp. 88-134. (PACKET).
Week 6: Caribbean Voyages and Settlements
How did views of the Caribbean compare with views of the mainland in the early-mid
seventeenth century?
**Richard Ligon, A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, (London, 1673).
21-58 and 104-119. (PACKET)
Week 7: Happy Reading.
Section Two: Captivity and Slavery
Week 8: English Captivity, I
How did captivity and war affect the way that English people described Native
Americans?
** Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the
Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed : being a narrative of the captivity and restoration
of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (either in edition by Neal Salisbury, ed. (Boston: Bedford
Books, 1997), or in Wendy Martin, Colonial American Travel Narratives (with
explanatory notes by Susan Imbarrato and Deborah Dietrich). (New York: Penguin
Books, 1994).
Week 9: English Captivity, II
How did religion affect the way that English people described the non-English?
**John Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion, from Alden T. Vaughan and
Edward W. Clark,eds. Puritans among the Indians : Accounts of Captivity and
Redemption, 1676-1724, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981) (PACKET).
Week 10: African Captivity
How did captivity and war affect the way that enslaved Africans wrote about Europeans?
** Olaudah Equiano, The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa, the African, edited by Werner Sollors (New York; Norton, 2001), or in
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and William L. Andrews, eds. Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five
Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815 (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint,
1998), ONLY THROUGH CH 9.
Week 11: Caribbean Slavery, I
How did visitors experience Caribbean plantation life?
** Janet Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality; being the narrative of a journey from
Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the years 1774 to 1776,
edited by Evangeline Walker Andrews, in collaboration with Charles McLean Andrews
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(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921). (PACKET), pp 78-143.
Week 12: Caribbean Slavery, II
What differences did class, status, and national origin make to the ways that authors
wrote about the Caribbean?
**Lady Maria Nugent, Lady Nugent's Journal: Jamaica One Hundred and Thirty Years
Ago, edited by Frank Cundal (London: West India Committee, 1934), ), pp. 13-69, 117118. (PACKET)
**Eliza Chadwick Roberts, A Voyage to Jamaica, 1805, edited by Susan E. Klepp and
Roderick A. McDonald, William and Mary Quarterly 58:3 (July 2001), 661-672
http://www.historycoop.org/journals/wm/58.3/klepp2.html
END OF SEMESTER ONE—HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Semester Two
Section Three: Becoming America?
Week 1: Mainland Travellers, I
What kinds of transitions had occurred in mainland society by the early eighteenthcentury?
**Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journal of Madam Knight in Wendy Martin, Colonial
American Travel Narratives (with explanatory notes by Susan Imbarrato and Deborah
Dietrich). (New York: Penguin Books, 1994).
Week 2: Mainland Travellers, II
How do differences in status and gender affect the nature of colonial American travel
narratives?
**William Moraley, The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley,
An Indentured Servant, eds. Susan E. Klepp & Billy G. Smith (University PARK, PA:
Penn State Press, 1992 [1743].
Week 3: Mainland Travellers, III
Does Hamilton’s account support the view that American life was radically transformed
by the middle of the eighteenth century?
**Dr. Alexander Hamilton, Itinarium, in Wendy Martin, Colonial American Travel
Narratives (with explanatory notes by Susan Imbarrato and Deborah Dietrich). (New
York : Penguin Books, 1994).
Section Four: New Nation, New Frontiers
Week 4: “What then is the American, this new man?” I
What effect did the American Revolution have on Americans?
**Janet Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality; being the narrative of a journey from
Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the years 1774 to 1776,
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edited by Evangeline Walker Andrews, in collaboration with Charles McLean Andrews
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), pp 144-215. (PACKET),
Week 5: What then is the American, this new man? II
Should Crevecoeur’s account of America be considered to be a positive one?
**Hector St. John de Crèvecouer, Letters from an American Farmer, ed. Susan Manning,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Letters I-IV, IX
Week 6: New Frontiers, I
How did understandings of nature and science influence post-revolutionary exploration?
**William Bartram, Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West
Florida, the Cherokee country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek
Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws (Athens, GA: University of Georgia
Press, 1998), Part III, Chs. 1-IV (pp 250-302)
Week 7: New Frontiers, II
Is the concept of “frontier” a useful one in understanding the geographic expansion of the
early American republic?
**William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Ed. Bernard
deVoto. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953. Chs 332-369.
Two Weeks’ Holiday.
Week 8: Gobbet Test in Class
Week 9: Here then are the Americans
What features united Americans in the early republic? What features divided them?
**Frances Milton Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, edited by Pamela
Neville-Sington (New York: Penguin Books, 1997) or ed. Joanna Trollope (!) (London:
Century Publishing Co, 1984), Chs 14-22.
Week 10: Long Essay Presentations/Themes and Revision
Week 11: Long Essay Presentations/Themes and Revision
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