Description

This anthology of primary material brings together literary and non-literary texts from the eighteenth-century focusing on issues including commerce and colonialism. Britons’ sense of identity in the eighteenth-century see-sawed between embattled vulnerability and unassailable supremacy. Empire was crucial in shaping this, but contact with other peoples often threw into sharp relief or transformed this sense of identity. This book will be an essential resource for those studying this period; it traces these shifts in mood and the impact of imperial encounters in a variety of material, including poems, plays, speeches, letters, and accounts of travel, exploration and captivity.

Publisher Review

'A good companion to literary studies of the period.' - Suvir Kaul, University of Pennsylvania, USA 'Out of this rich selection of materials emerges a fascinating debate about the human implications of imperialism, its evils, ideals, and troubling ironies...A valuable course-book for anyone teaching this aspect of the eighteenth-century.' - David Fairer, University of Leeds, UK 'Stephen Gregg has put together an extremely well-balanced selection, representing the manner in which Britannia ruled the waves in the eighteenth-century. He includes gendered and subaltern voices among the canonical ones, demonstrating the complex identities that were fashioned when empire encountered different zones, such as the Atlantic, the Orient, and the Pacific. Also featuring The Nabob, Samuel Foote's satirical drama, in its entirety, this sourcebook is a succinct resource of extracts from various genres for the benefit of both teachers and students.' - Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University, USA