Gilbert Imlay: Citizen of the World (review)

Abstract

Gilbert Imlay: Citizen of the World. By Wil Verhoeven. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008. Pp. xiii, 299. Cloth: $99.00.)Reviewed Will MackintoshGilbert Imlay was a shadowy figure in the background of the worldremaking events of the late eighteenth century. Born in New Jersey in 1754, he served in the American Revolution, participated in the Kentucky land bubble of the 1780s, dabbled in the slave trade, rose to prominence as a radical author in London in the 1790s, profited in Paris as a purveyor to the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror, and spent three stormy years as Mary Wollstonecraft's wayward lover. As Wil Verhoeven portrays him, he was by no means a major historical figure in his own right, but he moved in exalted circles and had an uncanny ability to be present at major historical crossroads. The common thread in Imlay's life was that he was [i]n many ways a prototype of the American whose mobility allowed him to constantly reinvent himself the murky margins of the Atlantic world (1). Verhoeven's book is the first full-length biography of Imlay, and it carefully illuminates this theme.Verhoeven divides Imlay's life into three epochs. The first section, America, discusses his youth in war-torn Monmouth County, his service in the Continental Army, and his years as a speculator in land and slaves. It was in Kentucky that Imlay first revealed his abilities as a conman and accomplice to the grand schemers and speculators of the era (68). Verhoeven's reconstruction from court records of Imlay's complicated and fraudulent dealings is an archival tour de force. The second section, England, traces Imlay's career as a novelist and authority on the American west during the Revolution Controversy in London. His reinvented himself in print as a Jacobin philosopher and reformer who promoted a radical vision of social utopia in the western wilderness. Here Verhoeven shows his scholarly virtuosity seamlessly shifting research strategies to a painstaking history of the book methodology. The final section, recounts Imlay's sojourn in revolutionary France, where he joined many of his radical British cohorts in supporting the revolutionary cause. In Paris, Imlay plotted with the Girondists to retake Louisiana for the cause of the revolution, participated in dangerous but highly profitable blockade running with a clique of radical British and American merchants, and romanced Wollstonecraft. After the implosion of their relationship in 1796, Imlay's near-total disappearance from the historical record stumps even an intrepid researcher such as Verhoeven. He died in obscurity on the Island of Jersey in 1828.The chief payoff of Verhoeven's careful reconstruction of Imlay's life is that it brings a much-needed subtlety to interpretations of the founding generation. As Nancy Isenberg has recently pointed out in Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), historians have tended to view the founders in stark moral terms and their political strug- gles as conflicts between good and evil. In Verhoeven's deft hands, a liminal figure like Imlay was both radical and revanchist, cultural critic and conman, patriot and profiteer - and never a hypocrite. …