Astonishing Contrasts in J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s Caribbean Sketches

Abstract

AbstractUnder the influence of emergent scientific insights in atmospheric chemistry and plant physiology, a growing concern for climatic variation is evident in travel narratives about the American tropics, where the consequences of intense monoculture and extractivism were more visible than elsewhere. This chapter explores the implications of this developing climate awareness in J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York (1801). While largely neglected by critics, this work points to a broader shift in climatic epistemologies toward the end of the eighteenth century. Mobilizing a picturesque register of contrasting effects to dramatize and interrogate the climatic differences between the Caribbean and the American mainland colonies, the Journey reveals deep-seated anxieties regarding humans’ impact on the climate that call into question received interpretations of Crèvecœur’s work as an expression of agrarian individualism.