“I Rejoiced to Find Myself on a Kindred Shore”: British Travel Writers in the Revolutionary British Atlantic World, c. 1750-1820.

Abstract

In the second half of the long eighteenth century, an ever-increasing number of British travellers arrived in Anglo-America. Arriving during a turbulent time of war and revolution, these men wished to learn more about the real America and, by writing travel books, explain it to Britons at home. These travellers were primarily tourists impatient to see the sights, yet, owing to Anglo-America’s place in the British Atlantic world, they simultaneously had little desire to genuinely find themselves abroad. Even after the American Revolution, British travellers persisted in their belief that Anglo-America was a “kindred,” not a foreign, place. To reassure themselves that it was not altogether strange, travellers looked for signs of the familiar or suggested ways that North America might be made to better resemble Great Britain. Even so, the America they found was an often complex and contradictory place. Travellers could marvel over how quickly Anglo-Americans civilized the wilderness even while showing horror over the inescapable endless miles of gloomy woods. They debated the growing sectarian split between the North and South and disliked slavery, even whilst finding many signs of home on the plantation. If Broadway looked like Bond Street, then a closer look at the people they met reminded travellers that they were indeed in the New World. In Anglo-America, the familiar mingled with difference. This dissertation argues that British travel writing contributed towards the sense that the British Atlantic world survived a as cultural entity across the second half of the long eighteenth century. North America seemed relevant to both travellers and their readers, with works of travel promoting emigration and trade across the Atlantic. Based on a reading of twenty travel narratives written and published by Britons between 1750 and 1820, this dissertation fills an historiographical lacuna in the study of travel writing, a field which has long favoured exotic regions and, in North America, the nineteenth century.