Cosmopolitanism, Comparison and Affect: Decolonising Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay reads anew Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899) as a pedagogical project taking the reader through an ethical, affective journey that upends certain racial, cultural ideologies regarding China. Invoking concepts such as Victorian globalism and free-trade cosmopolitanism, it first examines the ways in which Bird’s interest in the China trade relates to an ethical vision of cosmopolitan community propelled by the ameliorative roles of nineteenth-century globalization. It turns then to explore the use of comparison as a humbling way of seeing self and other in the liminal space of traveling encounters. Finally, it shows the affective, liberating potency of female mobility, contributing to the rise of empowering emotions that shape productive interactions with proximate locals. This essay contributes to debates surrounding the decolonising of Victorian studies and the paradigm shift brought forth by the mobility turn in travel writing studies.