The Geographic Revolution In Early America

The rapid rise in popularity of maps and geography handbooks in the eighteenth century ushered in a new geographic literacy among nonelite Americans. In a pathbreaking and richly illustrated examination of this transformation, Martin Bruckner argues that geographic literacy as it was played out in popular literary genres--written, for example, by William Byrd, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark--significantly influenced the formation of identity in America from the 1680s to the 1820s. Drawing on historical geography, cartography, literary history, and material culture, Bruckner recovers a vibrant culture of geography consisting of property plats and surveying manuals, decorative wall maps and school geographies, the nation's first atlases, and sentimental objects such as needlework samplers. By showing how this geographic revolution affected the production of literature, Bruckner demonstrates that the internalization of geography as a kind of language helped shape the literary construction of the modern American subject. Empirically rich and provocative in its readings, The Geographic Revolution in Early America proposes a new, geographical basis for Anglo-Americans' understanding of their character and its expression in pedagogical and literary terms.

57 studies of individual maps and the cultural environment that they spring from and exemplify, including one pre-Columbian map.

The field of transnational American studies is going through a paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific. This volume demonstrates a critical method of engaging the Asian Pacific: the chapters present alternative narratives that negotiate American dominance and exceptionalism by analyzing the experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders from the vast region, including those from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Hawaii, Guam, and other archipelagos. Contributors make use of materials from “oceanic archives,” retrieving what has seemingly been lost, forgotten, or downplayed inside and outside state-bound archives, state legal preoccupations, and state prioritized projects. The result is the recovery of indigenous epistemologies, which enables scholars to go beyond US-based sources and legitimates third-world knowledge production and dissemination. Surprising findings and unexpected perspectives abound in this work. Minnan traders from southern China are identified as the agents who connected the Indian Ocean with the Pacific, making the Manila Galleon trade in the sixteenth century the first completely global commercial enterprise. The Chamorro poetry of Guam gives a view of America from beyond its national borders and articulates the cultural pride of the Chamorro against US colonialism and imperialism. The continuing distortion of indigenous claims to the sovereignty of Hawaii is analyzed through a reading of the most widely circulated English translation of the creation myth, Kumulipo. There is also a critique of the Korean involvement in the American War in Vietnam, which was informed and shaped by Korean economy and politics in a global context. By investigating the transpacific as moments of military, cultural, and geopolitical contentions, this timely collection charts the reach and possibilities of the latest developments in the most dynamic form of transnational American studies. “This collection offers a well-organized and intellectually coherent series of essays addressing issues of American imperialism in Oceania and the Pacific region. Covering history, politics, and literary culture in equal measure, the essays are theoretically well-informed, and their focus on Indigenous cultures speaks to the current scholarly interest in the ways in which Indigenous communities can be understood within a global context.” —Paul Giles, University of Sydney “This terrific volume offers the latest mapping of that complex terrain known as the ‘transpacific.’ Timely and capacious, the essays here from an all-star cast of international scholars offer the latest thinking on the ‘oceanic’ dimensions of global modernity. Essential reading for anyone interested in the current ‘Asian’ turn in American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Transpacific Studies.” —Steven Yao, Hamilton College

A philosopher, architect, astronomer, and polymath, Thomas Jefferson lived at a time when geography was considered the "mother of all sciences." Although he published only a single printed map, Jefferson was also regarded as a geographer, owing to his interest in and use of geographic and cartographic materials during his many careers—attorney, farmer, sometime surveyor, and regional and national politician—and in his twilight years at Monticello. For roughly twenty-five years he was involved in almost all elements of the urban planning of Washington, D.C., and his surveying skills were reflected in his architectural drawings, including those of the iconic grounds of the University of Virginia. He understood maps not only as valuable for planning but as essential for future land claims and development, exploration and navigation, and continental commercial enterprise. In The True Geography of Our Country: Jefferson’s Cartographic Vision, Joel Kovarsky charts the importance of geography and maps as foundational for Jefferson’s lifelong pursuits. Although the world had already seen the Age of Exploration and the great sea voyages of Captain James Cook, Jefferson lived in a time when geography was of primary importance, prefiguring the rapid specializations of the mid- to late-nineteenth-century world. In this illustrated exploration of Jefferson’s passion for geography—including his role in planning the route followed and regions explored by Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, as well as other expeditions into the vast expanse of the Louisiana Purchase—Kovarsky reveals how geographical knowledge was essential to the manifold interests of the Sage of Monticello.

Charles Withers explains how the choice of Greenwich to mark 0° longitude solved problems of global measurement that had engaged geographers, astronomers, and mariners since ancient times. This history is a testament to the power of maps, the challenges of global measurement, and the role of scientific authority in creating the modern world.

The essays in this pathbreaking collection consider the significance of varied early American fragmentary genres and practices—from diaries and poetry, to almanacs and commonplace books, to sermons and lists, to Indigenous ruins and other material shards and fragments—often overlooked by critics in a scholarly privileging of the “whole.” Contributors from literary studies, book history, and visual culture discuss a host of canonical and non-canonical figures, from Edward Taylor and Washington Irving to Mary Rowlandson and Sarah Kemble Knight, offering insight into the many intellectual, ideological, and material variations of “form” that populated the early American cultural landscape. As these essays reveal, the casting of the fragmentary as aesthetically eccentric or incomplete was a way of reckoning with concerns about the related fragmentation of nation, society, and self. For a contemporary audience, they offer new ways to think about the inevitable gaps and absences in our cultural and historical archive.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.