this version: 9-29-07
keyword “travel literature” 1700H OR 1800H AHL/HA * 9-24-07
Gascoigne, John. “THE EXPANDING HISTORIOGRAPHY OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM.”
Historical Journal [Great Britain] 2006 49(2): 577-592.
Abstract: Considers recent developments in the writing of imperial history, paying particular
attention to the growing emphasis on cultural history. Such an emphasis reflects a close
engagement with issues such as the formation of national identity in an imperial context and
the ways in which systems of knowledge - including religion, science, and notions of gender
- were linked with structures of empire. The extent to which cultural history intersects with
concerns of literary scholars and anthropologists - in its engagement with travel literature, for
example - further indicates the increasingly interdisciplinary character of imperial history.
The article raises the issue of the limits, as well as the strengths, that flow from the
expanding scope of cultural history, as well as offering suggestions as to why imperial
history is likely to become increasingly important in a globalized world.
Brown, Matthew. “RICHARD VOWELL'S NOT-SO-IMPERIAL EYES: TRAVEL WRITING
AND ADVENTURE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY HISPANIC AMERICA.” Journal of Latin
American Studies [Great Britain] 2006 38(1): 95-122.
Abstract: Richard Vowell was a British mercenary who served in the wars of independence
in Hispanic America. A study of his writings offers a new perspective from which to
reconsider the influential arguments of Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing
and Transculturation (1992). The article emphasizes the ways in which Vowell depicted
Hispanic American masculinities, indigenous peoples, collective identities, and the diverse
groups that made up society during the wars of independence. Vowell's writings suggest that
further sources might be read against the traditional canon of commercial travel literature
generally used by historians for the period 1800-50.
Douglas, Bronwen. “SLIPPERY WORD, AMBIGUOUS PRAXIS: "RACE" AND LATE18TH-CENTURY VOYAGERS IN OCEANIA.” Journal of Pacific History [Great Britain]
2006 41(1): 1-29.
Abstract: Traces the presence, absence, and shifting connotations of the term "race" and the
idea of human classification in representations of indigenous Oceanian people by navigators,
naturalists, and artists on 18th-century British and French voyages. These ambiguous usages
signified hardening European attitudes to human difference, as the holistic,
"environmentalist" explanations of the natural history of man lost ground to the
differentiating physicalism of the new sciences of biology and physical anthropology.
However, by correlating the generation of ideas with particular embodied encounters, the
article questions the presumption that voyagers' representations of indigenous people were
entirely determined by preconceptions derived from received knowledge and prevailing
discourses. It suggests instead that indigenous behavior and demeanor left latent countersigns
in the language, tone, and content of such travel literature and art - on which the emergent
metropolitan science of man drew heavily to justify its deductions.
Sassi, Jonathan D. “AFRICANS IN THE QUAKER IMAGE: ANTHONY BENEZET,
AFRICAN TRAVEL NARRATIVES, AND REVOLUTIONARY-ERA ANTISLAVERY.”
Journal of Early Modern History [Netherlands] 2006 10(1-2): 95-130.
Abstract: Compares Anthony Benezet's influential 1771 antislavery tract, Some Historical
Account of Guinea, with the sources from which he gleaned his information about Africa and
the slave trade, the narratives published by European travelers to West Africa. Benezet, a
Philadelphia Quaker and humanitarian reformer, cited the travel literature in order to portray
Africa as an abundant land of decent people. He thereby refuted the apology that cast the
slave trade as a beneficial transfer of people from a land of barbarism and death to regions of
civilization and Christianity. However, Benezet employed the travel narratives selectively,
suppressing contradictory evidence as well as controversial material that could have been
used to construct an alternative depiction of African humanity. Nonetheless, Benezet's
research shaped the subsequent debate over the slave trade and slavery, as antislavery writers
incorporated his depiction into their rhetorical arsenal and proslavery defenders searched for
a rebuttal.
Fisher, Michael H. “EUROPEAN TRAVEL LITERATURE BEYOND BRITISH INDIA'S
NINETEENTH-CENTURY WESTERN FRONTIER.” Itinerario [Netherlands] 2005 29(1):
101-105.
Abstract: Reviews three reprinted narratives of 19th-century India: Henry Pottinger's Travels
in Beloochistan and Sinde (1816), Karl von Hügel's Travels in Kashmir and the Panjab
(1845), and Florentia Sale's A Journal of the First Afghan War (1843). While the experiences
of each of these travelers differed considerably, as did their individual circumstances
(Pottinger was an officer in the employ of the East India Company, Hügel a German traveler,
and Sale the wife of a British officer), collectively their narratives demonstrate the powerful
influence of contemporary views of Indian society as well as the persistent influences of
classical studies on their interpretations of the wider world.
Lange, Lou Ann. “TRAVELERS AND TRAVEL'S "SIGNIFICANT OTHERS": THREE
VISITORS TO THE ARKANSAS TERRITORY IN 1818-1819.” Missouri Historical Review
2005 100(1): 19-39.
Abstract: Analyzes the travel literature written by three men who ventured into the Arkansas
territory from 1818 to 1819. Timothy Flint, Thomas Nuttall, and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
separately set out to chronicle their experiences on the Western frontier with the hope of
becoming successful travel writers. Through an examination of their writings, the article
identifies a common faith in progress and civilization underlying their observations about the
environment and people they encountered. Flint, Nuttall, and Schoolcraft each described
Native Americans as nomadic people who would eventually be erased from history because
they refused to submit to the disciplines of law and labor essential to civilization. Their
writings exemplify the predominant beliefs about the West and Native Americans held by
Anglo-Americans at the time.
Dym, Jordana. “"MORE CALCULATED TO MISLEAD THAN INFORM": TRAVEL
WRITERS AND THE MAPPING OF CENTRAL AMERICA, 1821-1945.” Journal of
Historical Geography [Great Britain] 2004 30(2): 340-363.
Abstract: Examines maps produced by and for travelers to Central America, 1821-1945, a
genre of cartography rarely considered by historical geographers or scholars of travel
literature. During the first half of this period, travelers initially considered map production as
a key element in a travel account, preparing maps for future consideration rather than using
them to travel. With the advent of the railroad, steamship, automobile, and airline, 20thcentury travelers became map consumers rather than producers. Between 1821 and 1945, the
content of travelers' maps also evolved. Initial travelers to independent Central America
mapped political geography, emphasizing state boundaries established in the region's
independence. Subsequent travelers surveyed the interior for purposes of commercial
development, focusing on transit - railroad and canal routes, mining, and colonization. By the
late 19th century, with geographically accurate maps available to a general public in atlases
and other forms, travelers contributed "personalized" maps that no longer intended to
represent accurate topography but other scientific knowledge or entertainment, and by the
mid-20th century, maps became the work of publishers while travelers produced photographs
and illustrations.
Silverman, Raymond and Sobania, Neal. “MINING A MOTHER LODE: EARLY EUROPEAN
TRAVEL LITERATURE AND THE HISTORY OF PRECIOUS METALWORKING IN
HIGHLAND ETHIOPIA.” History in Africa 2004 31: 335-355.
Abstract: Beginning with Francisco Alvarez in the 1520's, Europeans who reached Ethiopia's
interior reported on the production of items fashioned there by Ethiopian and foreign
craftsmen from gold, silver, and jewels. These items included crowns, crosses, and liturgical
paraphernalia used by the political elite and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. While the
sources of gold in Ethiopia remained a mystery, the silver used by the metallurgists in
Ethiopia from the late 18th century came from Ethiopia's extensive importation of Maria
Theresa talers. Despite their significant economic and cultural contributions, Ethiopia's
metalworkers and blacksmiths occupied a relatively low social position, relative to those of
the aristocracy and the peasantry.
Verhoeven, Gerrit. “"BROUGHT TOGETHER AT GREAT EFFORT": THE PLACE OF
AUTHOR, PUBLISHER AND READER IN THE GENESIS OF THE EARLY MODERN
TRAVEL GUIDE.” Quaerendo [Netherlands] 2004 34(3-4): 240-253.
Abstract: A consideration of the functions of the three important agents - authors, publishers,
and readers - in Robert Darnton's concept of a communication circuit is used to illuminate the
nature and significance of travel literature in the early modern period. For a long time it was
thought that this genre had played an important part in the formation of cosmopolitan values
and the ideas of the Enlightenment. In recent years, however, this vision has been
increasingly called into question by historians whose analysis of the working methods of
early modern authors indicates that travel guides perpetuated stereotypes and erroneous ideas
rather than conveyed critical observation and understanding. While such a hypothesis is
perhaps tenable in the case of the 17th century, when most authors writing travel guides
confined themselves to copying or compiling previous works, the period of the late 17th and
early 18th centuries constituted a turning point. Scholarly journals gave rise to a more critical
approach to travel guides on the part of both authors and readers. The result was that authors
and publishers found themselves obliged to take greater care in ensuring that what they
published was accurate.
Barnes, Geraldine and Mitchell, Adrian. “MEASURING THE MARVELOUS: SCIENCE AND
THE EXOTIC IN WILLIAM DAMPIER.” Eighteenth-Century Life 2002 26(3): 45-57.
Abstract: English buccaneer, sea captain, and explorer William Dampier (1652-1715)
chronicled his experiences in the Caribbean and the South Seas in A New Voyage Round the
World (1697) and A Voyage to New Holland (1703-09). Written with a view toward the new
scientific objectivity characteristic of the Enlightenment, the works are remembered more for
their contribution to travel literature than to natural history.
Lacey, Barbara E. “VISUAL IMAGES OF BLACKS IN EARLY AMERICAN IMPRINTS.”
William and Mary Quarterly 1996 53(1): 137-180.
Abstract: Analyzes images of blacks appearing in books, pamphlets, broadsides, magazines,
and certain newspapers in the United States from 1640 to 1800, with emphasis on images of
the 1790's. The illustrations reveal racial attitudes and can be grouped into five categories:
physiological descriptions, Africans in travel literature, blacks in Protestant tracts, blacks at
historical sites, and black portraits. Often images conflict with the texts that accompany
them. The article notes the artists' intentions and expectations of audiences.
Liebersohn, Harry. “DISCOVERING INDIGENOUS NOBILITY: TOCQUEVILLE,
CHAMISSO, AND ROMANTIC TRAVEL WRITING.” American Historical Review 1994
99(3): 746-766.
Abstract: The French Revolution transformed the descriptions that elite European travelers
made of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania. Even as the revolution ended
the romantic discourse of a primordial nobility in Europe, travelers and writers Alexis de
Tocqueville and Adelbert von Chamisso were able to displace this discourse onto the New
World "Other" and experience it abroad. Instead of seeing American Indians as exemplars of
natural reason, the "noble savage" of prerevolutionary writing, upper-class Europeans now
described them as embodiments of honor and warrior valor, a kind of indigenous nobility or
"savage noble." Tocqueville and Chamisso are understood as ambivalent liberals who
believed in commerce and democracy but lamented their destructive impact on nonEuropeans. Their writings contributed to a travel literature that revived noble values in 19thcentury Europe.
Hunt, Margaret. “RACISM, IMPERIALISM, AND THE TRAVELER'S GAZE IN
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND.” Journal of British Studies 1993 32(4): 333-357.
Abstract: Travel books were extremely popular with the rising middle class in 18th-century
England. Such literature confirmed prevalent racist notions and helped to systemize such
beliefs into a clearly worked out racial hierarchy that placed Europeans at the top. Travel
writing was increasingly addressed to the interests of the trading or "middling" classes and
introduced the reading public to the "commercial gaze," a way of viewing foreign lands
primarily in terms of profit potential.
Bolitho, Harold. “TRAVELERS' TALES: THREE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVEL
JOURNALS.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 1990 50(2): 485-504.
Abstract: During the last decades of the 18th century recreational travel in Japan became
increasingly popular. Travel guide books were widely published and travel literature attained
distinction through the works of three notable travelers: Furukawa Koshoken, Tachibana
Nankei, and Sugae Masumi. Influenced by the Japanese scientific enlightenment of the 18th
century, their accounts catalog plants and minerals along with obligatory references to the
scenery and passages of poetry.
Adams, Percy. “PERCEPTION AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVELER.”
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 1985 26(2): 139-157.
Abstract: Eighteenth-century travelers showed a marked inability to grasp the meaning of
phenomena new to them. Two extreme types dominated travel literature: those who noted
objective data such as names and distances and those who noted subjective observations such
as opinions and personal adventures. In either case, distortion usually occurred.
Terrie, Philip G. “ROMANTIC TRAVELERS IN THE ADIRONDACK WILDERNESS.”
American Studies 1983 24(2): 59-75.
Abstract: Romantic travel literature was very popular in early 19th-century America, and
reflected comfortable and affluent Easterners' fascination with the wilderness. The
Adirondacks were one of the most popular camping areas of this era, and became the subject
of an outburst of popular romanticism in which the landscape became an object of aesthetic
appreciation. This attitude is exemplified in the writings of Joel T. Headley and Ralph Waldo
Emerson on nature and the wilderness.
Chiasson, Paulette M. “AS OTHERS SAW US: NOVA SCOTIAN TRAVEL LITERATURE
FROM THE 1770S TO THE 1860S.” Nova Scotia Historical Review [Canada] 1982 2(2): 9-24.
Abstract: Early British and French travelers in Nova Scotia recorded their impressions of the
natives, social customs, farming, and fishing practices; they presented varying conclusions,
generally containing censorious comments.
Stafford, Barbara Maria. “TOWARD ROMANTIC LANDSCAPE PERCEPTION:
ILLUSTRATED TRAVELS AND THE RISE OF "SINGULARITY" AS AN AESTHETIC
CATEGORY.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 1981 10: 17-75.
Abstract: During the second half of the 18th century, the travel book came to reproduce
landscape in which the strong sense for the individuality and substance of natural phenomena
rendered human figures insignificant. Natural objects were perceived as lone and strikingly
distinct. The dominant natural configuration, demanding immediate respectful attention,
became a potent feature of scientific travel literature and created an aesthetic category of its
own: that of singularity. The distinctive taste for the singular may be seen to emerge from a
number of 18th-century concerns: the art-versus-nature controversy, the fascination with
lusus naturae, the delight in minerals, metals, and crystals, the aesthetic influence of geology,
and the recrudescence of animism as a vital force in Enlightenment philosophy.
Zukowsky, John. “CASTLES ON THE HUDSON.” Winterthur Portfolio 1979 14(1): 73-92.
Abstract: Examines 19th-century authors who compared the Hudson River with the Rhine
River and some of the resulting architecture found on the lower Hudson. James Fenimore
Cooper and Washington Irving influenced travel literature by comparing the two rivers.
Chateaux, castellated villas, and a few manor houses resulted from the literary comparison
and the social status of the owners who saw themselves as the "proper lords" of the American
Rhine.
Young, David. “MONTESQUIEU'S VIEW OF DESPOTISM AND HIS USE OF TRAVEL
LITERATURE.” Review of Politics 1978 40(3): 392-405.
Abstract: In his Esprit des lois, Montesquieu was less than fair and objective in his analysis
of Asian governments. Montesquieu overlooked much available evidence in his advocacy of
limited constitutional government. He did not do justice to travel accounts and to the Middle
East.
Paredes, Raymund A. “THE MEXICAN IMAGE IN AMERICAN TRAVEL LITERATURE,
1831-1869.” New Mexico Historical Review 1977 52(1): 5-13.
Abstract: Most of the information available to the people of the United States concerning
Mexico in the mid-19th century is found in travel accounts written by Americans visiting
Mexico. As Mexico became more familiar to the Americans, fewer such accounts were
published. One of the best assessments of New Mexico is found in Josiah Gregg, Commerce
on the Prairies (1844). He is generally complimentary in writing about the people of New
Mexico, but he thought the provincial government was corrupt. Other travelers from the
United States who wrote about Mexico and Mexicans in the West and Far West included:
James Ohio Pattie, Albert Pike, Mary Austin Holley, George Wilkins Kendall, Richard
Henry Dana, Alfred Robinson, Walter Colton, Bayard Taylor, John Russell Bartlett, Albert
Gilliam, Brantz Mayer, John T. Hughes, Frank S. Edwards, Captain W. S. Henry, Adolph
Wislizenus, Rufus Sage, Samuel Hammett, William Shaler, Thomas J. Farnham, Thomas
Davis, William H. Emory, W. W. H. Davis, and J. Ross Browne.
Hefferman, William. “THE SLAVE TRADE AND ABOLITION IN TRAVEL
LITERATURE.” Journal of the History of Ideas 1973 34(2): 185-208.
Abstract: An analysis of the travel literature on Africa for the last half of the 18th century as
furnishing illustration and argument (in England) for both the abolitionist and antiabolitionist cause. This literature greatly influenced popular thinking on the subject and
"helped shape racial and imperialistic attitudes for the next century." It fed already existing
myths and created new ones: Africa as the dark continent with an extreme barbarism growing
into an acceptance of racial inferiority, and, conversely, abolitionists tended to depict the
African in terms of the myth of the noble savage. Likewise this literature abounds in other
contradictions: the myth of Africa as the land of tropical exuberance versus Africa as the
"white man's grave"; an Edenic land with food without work versus a disease-ridden land
hazardous to enter; and monogenetic versus polygenetic theories of human origins to account
for the races. Concludes that travel literature had as much popular influence on public
opinion as the imaginative literature heretofore emphasized.
review articles -Espey, David. “AMERICAN TRAVEL REVISITED.” American Literary History 2005 17(4):
808-817.
Abstract: Reviews Bruce A. Harvey's American Geographics: U.S. National Narratives and
the Representation of the Non-European World, 1830-1865 (2001), Larzer Ziff's Return
Passages: Great American Travel Writing, 1780-1910 (2000), and Justin Edwards's Exotic
Journeys: Exploring the Erotics of U.S. Travel Literature, 1840-1930 (2001). Harvey
examines how American geography textbooks fused nationalistic, theological, and cultural
prejudices that shaped both maps and ethnographical information. Ziff explores conceptions
of American national identity in the works of five representative American travel writers and
how they shaped broader literary currents. Edwards studies the links between sexuality and
national identity in writings about "exotic" locales both abroad and at home. Together, the
works reflect a turn in the study of travel writing to examining the distinctive national
identities and cultural attitudes of American travel writers and how their prejudices and
preconceptions shaped their representations of non-European people and places.
Fink, Beatrice. “SPACED OUT: EARLY MODERN FRENCH TRAVEL LITERATURE.”
Eighteenth-Century Life 2004 28(3): 118-127.
Abstract: Reviews Sophie Linon-Chipon's Gallia Orientalis: Voyages aux Indes Orientales,
1529-1722. Poétique et Imaginaire d'un Genre Littéraire en Formation (2003) and a new
edition of Louis-Antoine de Bouganville's Voyage autour du Monde (2001), edited by
Michel Bideaux and Sonia Faessel, two works that shed light on the influence of French
travel literature on Enlightenment thought during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Liebersohn, Harry. “RECENT WORKS ON TRAVEL WRITING.” Journal of Modern History
1996 68(3): 617-628.
Abstract: Reviews 11 recent books about travel writing. In the course of the last two
centuries, the enthusiasm expressed by the German romantic critic Friedrich Schlegel (17721829) for the notion of travel as educational has been superseded by a sort of world-weary
concern with historical context, hidden agendas, and the rhetorical strategies of travel writers.
Nevertheless, recent studies have rescued travel writing from a poorly defined locus between
(anthropological) science and literature and given it a claim to respectability distinct from
both literature and frivolous postmodern blendings of fact and fiction. Travel writers remain
empirical if imperfect recorders of meetings with people from other cultures who can never
be completely understood.