1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824686103321

Autore

Iannini Christopher P.

Titolo

Fatal revolutions : natural history, West Indian slavery, and the routes of American literature / / Christopher P. Iannini

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chapel Hill : , : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, , [2012]

©2012

ISBN

979-88-908425-0-3

0-8078-3818-7

1-4696-0192-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (313 p.)

Collana

Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia

Disciplina

972.9

Soggetti

Natural history - West Indies

Slavery - West Indies - History - 18th century

West Indies Intellectual life 18th century

West Indies History 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; List of Illustrations; Abbreviations and Short Titles; Introduction; PART I. THE NATURE OF SLAVERY; 1 Strange Things, Occult Relations: Emblem and Narrative in Hans Sloane's: Voyage to . . . Jamaica; 2 Fatal Latitudes: The Poetics of West Indian "Improvement" in Mark Catesby's: Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands; PART II. REAPING THE EARLY REPUBLIC; 3 "The Itinerant Man": Crèvecoeur's Caribbean, Raynal's Revolution, and the Fate of Atlantic Cosmopolitanism

4 "All the West- Indian Weeds": William Bartram's Travels and the Natural History of the Floridas5 Notes on the State of Virginia, the Haitian Revolution, and the Return of Epistolarity; 6 The Birds of America and the Specter of Caribbean Accumulation; EPILOGUE: Humboldt's Havana; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; V; W; Y



Sommario/riassunto

Drawing on letters, illustrations, engravings, and neglected manuscripts, this book connects two dramatic transformations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world - the emergence and growth of the Caribbean plantation system and the rise of natural science. It argues that these transformations were not only deeply interconnected, but that together they established conditions fundamental to the development of a distinctive literary culture in the early Americas.