The Global Eighteenth Century by Felicity A. Nussbaum (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.3, 2005 751 The Global Eighteenth Century. Ed. by Felicity A. Nussbaum. Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. xiv+ 385 pp. ?40.50. ISBN 0-8018-6865-3. It has recently been suggested in some academic circles that contemporary sensitivity to issues of globalization and its implications has led critics to an anachronistic projection of such anxieties onto a period stretching from the fifteenthto the eighteenth century, and an equally anachronistic layering of postcolonial approaches upon precolonial cultures and material. This preoccupation with early global imaginings and manifestations has certainly produced a wealth of recent work that, with varying degrees of success, has sought to redefine and remap both the terminology itselfand the ways in which it might be productively applied to this period to form what the editor of this collection, Felicity Nussbaum, describes as a 'genealogical understanding on a global scale' (p. 3). Addressing all these issues in her illuminating introduction, Nussbaum is per? suasive in her theoretical discussion and precise in her explanation of terminology, arguing that our understanding of the 'long' eighteenth century needs also to incorporate a sense of global 'width' that might 'resituate eighteenth-century studies within a spatially and conceptually expanded paradigm' (p. 1). This substantial volume cer? tainly achieves this, comprising the work of twenty-one scholars from a variety of disciplines and offeringa series of innovations that stern from the wide-ranging con? tent and the conceptual focus required of the relatively short contributions. This is another ofthe collection's many great strengths, allowing each paper to be considered as a specific perspective upon the global networks of the eighteenth century, while enhancing the myriad of crossings and interactions that take place between them. Of particular note (unfortunately all cannot be mentioned) in the first part? 'Mappings'?are essays by Benjamin Schmidt upon notions of the exotic as under? stood in the context of Dutch 'geography, cartography, natural history,tropical paint? ing and travel literature' (p. 37); Matthew Edney's impressive investigation of British Imperial mappings of India; and Laura Brown's readings of national identity and the poetry of the emerging British Empire. Of the second part?'Crossings'?Linda Colley's re-examination of the power dynamic posited in Orientalism in the context of the Barbary Coast is particularly interesting; Kate Telscher's discussion of the remarkable exchanges between the Scot George Bogle and the Tibetan Lama is eyeopening and insightful; and Vincent Carreta's interrogation of the 'authenticity' of Oloudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789) substantially alters the traditional position accorded this important text. I found the final part?'Islands'?especially stimulating. Studies (and novels?see Dan Sleigh's recent novel of the same title) of islands have begun to emphasize the crucial part such locations have played, and perhaps continue to play, in our global imaginings, and in further scrutinizing this position this concluding section brings together many of the themes and approaches of the earlier papers. This is particularly true of the work done by Jill Casid upon French botanical transplantation and its influence in the texts of Bernardin SaintPierre ; in Anna Neill's work on Adam Smith and the figureofthe Captain; and in the final extraordinary replicas of the Endeavour and Hokule'a described and explored by Greg Dening. It is in fact in this final episode that ideas of the global and the complex interplay of 'metaphors of identity' (Dening, p. 323) are truly brought into focus in the con? text of contemporary concerns. That such an ambitious and consistently challenging collection can transform our perception of the 'worlds' of the eighteenth century, and thus force us to reconsider our own, is both a clear response to the critical viewpoint with which I began and indicative ofthe influence I expect this volume to exert. University of Sussex Matthew Dimmock ...