Creole Frontiers: Imperial Ambiguities in John Richardson’s and James Fenimore Cooper’s Fiction

Abstract

In his 2010 article Settler Postcolonialism as a Reading Strategy, Edward Watts argues that by using settler theory to study early literature, scholars in field can move away from binary of empire and resistance, toward a better understanding of multiple experimental and alternative nationalisms of early Republic. This timely decentering of nationalist narrative builds on shift toward postcolonial studies in literature, while reflecting more general transatlantic and hemispheric turn in studies in recent years. (1) In Watts's reading, then, settler theory has potential to transcend what Ralph Bauer describes as the limitations of critical and theoretical concepts, as well as markers of identity current in US studies ... across cultural and disciplinary borders (Early American 225). On one hand, postcolonial theory has created useful comparative frameworks for discussing local colonialisms; on other, dominant Anglo-American emphasis on colonizer-colonized conceptual binary fails to prove consistently useful in a hemispheric context. Furthermore, traditional periodizations of literary studies that separate colonial and national artificially normalize experience of decolonization, since US model was exception rather than norm in hemisphere until at least 1820 (Bauer, American 225). Thus, settler theory has unique potential to address both disciplinary shortcomings by positing early Americans as just one group of Euro-Creoles in Americas, simultaneously agents and subjects of imperial power, whose identities and relationship to land were triangulated across multiple political formations. This article examines relationship between such political formations and competing narratives of indigeneity and authenticity that underpinned frontier fiction in United States and Canada in 1820s and 1830s. (2) James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) and his contemporary and admirer, Canadian novelist John Richardson (1796-1852), have been traditionally read through lens of national canon as early representatives of Canadian and literatures, respectively. (3) The works of both have long drawn comparisons, which I do not intend to revisit here. (4) Rather, my goal is to illuminate commonalities of these two Euro-American Creoles via an examination of role that land, empire, and whiteness play in their literary invention of competing national and prenational pasts. In doing so, my use of settler postcolonialism dissociates term Creole from its racial connotations, dominant in studies scholarship, and uses it as a marker of difference in relationship between metropolis and its colonial outposts. At same time, rather than positing Richardson as a British colonial epigone of Cooper, I view him as translator of a literary model into a cultural paradigm shaped by different historical circumstances, and informed by different transatlantic and hemispheric power relations. Central to my argument is fact that, although both authors engage same empires and same geography, they wrote from within two concurrent political regimes, one colonial, one national, whose structures and conventions informed their respective frontiers. In early decades of nineteenth century, northern borderlands of Republic were underpinned by real, albeit contested, ideological fault lines. Early settlerhood evolved in dialogue with colonial settlerhood of British North America. British literature was widely read in colonies, but so were authors. Early Canadian fiction engaged not only with British imperial narratives and tropes of belonging but also with nationalism, defining itself in relation to both. Similarly, throughout nineteenth century culture remained involved in a series of complex political, cultural, and literary negotiations with Canada. …